Vivo V5 First Impressions

In light of Vivo’s recent launch of the V5, we were able to play around with the company’s first entry into the selfie-centric smartphone war, and here’s what we think:

Design

When you look at it, the design of the V5 has a lot of similarities with the OPPO F1s. In fact, here is a comparison of the two side by side.

Setting that aside, there are quite a few notable changes. For example, the home button is more emphasized, and now houses the fingerprint sensor. This button is fixed, which means you can’t press it like a normal button. Instead, you only need to tap it. Now, this may take a bit of getting used to, especially if you’re coming from a V3 or V3 Max, and may not be a big deal to most users, but personally, I still prefer it to be at the back.

Just like with other Vivo devices, the V5 is no exception when it comes to giving off a premium look and feel. The 5.5-inch display covered in 2.5d curved glass just looks beautiful. The back does feel a bit slippery though, so try to get a secure grip or just put it in a case.

Display

The 5.5-inch 720p display is very bright and vivid. Default color temperature seems to lean on the cooler side.

Camera

The main highlight of the V5 is its 20MP front facing camera. We took some selfies with it and true enough, the shots seem to look a bit better than usual with good details and contrast, as well as accurate colors. We’ll be looking into more details on our full review. Here’s a sample selfie.

In terms of the camera interface, there are only a few shooting modes available. There is however, Professional photo, which allows for adjusting more settings for your shots.

Performance

Navigating the UI was very smooth with no hints of stuttering. Apps seemed to open quickly and the device didn’t heat up even when we were continuously taking selfies. We’ll just have to see how well it performs with heavy multitasking and games.

Overall, the V5 seems to be a solid device for its price of PhP 12,990. But how will it perform as a daily driver? Moreso, how is it compared to the OPPO F1s? which is basically the head-on competitor in the selfie-centric smartphone category. All of that, and many more details will be included in our comparison and full review.

Vivo V5 Specs

Emman Tortoza

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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.