Introduction
vivo has firmly established itself as one of the smartphone brands in the Philippines that offer devices with great camera performance and stylish designs at relatively accessible prices. The company’s latest addition to its popular V-Series, vivo V30, aims to continue that tradition by packing impressive imaging capabilities and powerful hardware into a sleek and well-built package priced attractively in the mid-range segment.
With a starting price of just PHP 24,999, the vivo V30 is an enticing option for those seeking a great camera experience without breaking the bank, at least on paper. But does it truly deliver? Let’s take a dive into a full review.
Design and Build Quality
The vivo V30 boasts a slim and lightweight body built from premium materials. It feels solid yet compact in the hand. The matte and somewhat glittery back resists fingerprints but is slippery, prompting you to get a good hold of the phone at all times if not using a case.
On the contrary, its curved sides, top, and bottom are in a glossy finish, making them a fingerprint magnet. As usual, neither is there a headphone jack nor a microSD card slot.
The vivo V30 features a generously sized 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED display with curved edges that seamlessly blend into the frame. Thanks to slim bezels combined with rich colors and deep blacks, the screen feels very immersive for gaming and media consumption.
The AMOLED panel is bright, vivid, and incredibly smooth with its 120Hz refresh rate. Peak brightness is rated at an impressive 2800 nits, ensuring good visibility under direct sunlight. The display also boasts HDR10+ certification and DCI-P3 wide color gamut coverage for punchier colors and HDR video playback.
While not the toughest phone around, the vivo V30 does have an IP54 dust and water resistance rating that provides some protection against splashes and spills.
Camera
Photography is where the vivo V30 truly shines, thanks to its advanced triple-camera system and software imaging smarts. The main star of the show is the 50MP main camera sensor with optical image stabilization (OIS) and vivo’s custom Camera Bionic Spectrum (VCS) technology that enhances overall image quality.
In practice, the V30 captures highly detailed photos with excellent dynamic range, accurate colors, and good low-light performance. While not quite at the same level as premium flagships, image quality is very competitive versus other mid-rangers and even some higher-end phones.
The 50MP ultra-wide camera also impresses by producing great edge-to-edge sharpness across its 119-degree field of view. Images look vibrant and distortion in the corners is well-controlled. I’d say it almost matches the quality of the main camera in most cases.
The device was able to capture clean, detailed, portraits even in low light. It’s edge-detection isn’t perfect, but for a midrange phone, it’s definitely excellent. Despite not having a periscope camera, photo quality when zoomed in is still very good until around 5x.
Night shots also look great, with samples showing good sharpness and good amounts of detail. Its control on light sources is also impressive, allowing you to easily take shots of lamps and lightbulbs without having to worry about that “exploding light” effect.
The large 50MP selfie shooter captures flattering selfies with great detail and dynamic range, making it a top choice for social media mavens.
For videos, the main and front cameras max out at 4K 30 fps, while the ultra-wide unit maxes out at only 1080p 30fps. Quality-wise, 4K videos look great even with standard stabilization enabled, and that works well too.
Performance
Under the hood, the vivo V30 packs quite a punch with its flagship-grade Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor from Qualcomm. This chip delivers excellent CPU and GPU performance that can handle even the most demanding mobile games and apps without breaking a sweat.
Complementing the powerful chip is 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 2.2 storage. While it’s not as fast the vivo V30 Pro’s UFS 3.1 and LPDDR5X on paper, you still get buttery smooth multitasking and fast app load times.
In benchmarks and real-world use, the vivo V30 performs very well and can definitely keep pace with pricier phones. As for gaming, Diablo Immortal runs well and smooth on High Resolution and Very High Quality, and Honkai: Star Rail runs great with 60 fps enabled and Very High preset. Heavy multi-tasking among multiple apps shows no signs of slowing down this device as well.
vivo’s twin cooling system that combines a vapor chamber and graphite sheets seem to work well too, as we didn’t really feel the phone getting too hot, and performance was pretty consistent.
Battery Life and Charging
The vivo V30 keeps you powered for over a day’s use with its 5,000mAh battery. In PCMark’s battery test, which simulates tasks like data manipulation, web browsing, video and photo editing, and more, it scored an impressive 18 hours and 44 minutes.
In day-to-day use involving browsing, social media, some gaming, and camera use, we easily got over a full day’s worth of uptime from a full charge. Power users can expect at least a full day while average users can probably stretch it to almost 2 days.
When it’s time to top up, the included 80W FlashCharge power brick gets you replenished rapidly, taking the phone from zero to full in under an hour.
vivo has certainly put a lot of effort into prolonging the battery’s lifespan, which has now been doubled to four years. They claim that the battery capacity will remain above 80% even after 1,600 charge-discharge cycles.
Audio Quality
Like most phones these days, the vivo V30 lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, opting for USB-C audio instead. and it only has a single speaker at the bottom. That being said, the audio output is still loud, fairly clear and offers a good balance with some low-end.
Software Experience
The vivo V30 ships with the latest Android 14 topped with vivo’s Funtouch OS 14 custom skin. This interface has certainly come a long way with a clean and modern look while adding useful customization features. In fact, they let you change a lot of things from the fingerprint detection animation, to the effect shown when the device is plugged in.
The UI is very responsive and fluid thanks to the powerful hardware underneath and optimizations by vivo. You get handy features like an always-on display, multi-window multitasking, game optimization tools, and a good set of options to personalize the device to your liking.
While pre-installed app is kept to a minimal, there’s still a couple of folders of shortcuts, and then there are the annoying notifications, mostly from vivo’s own apps.
vivo V30: Verdict
With excellent imaging capabilities and performance, beautiful design and superb battery life, the vivo V30 goes beyond its mid-range price tag to deliver one of the best all-around smartphone experiences you can get under PHP 30,000.
On the flip side, the ultra-wide unit can only do 1080p video, it’s only IP57 rated, and there are no stereo speakers. Oh, and those annoying notifications really need to go.
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
