Vivo V19 – All About Big Cameras

Chinese smartphone maker company Vivo has recently announced a new smartphone of their V-series, Vivo V19. This smartphone was officially launched on the 15th of May, 2020. As the previous V-Series smartphones from Vivo, the V19 is also a selfie-centric camera phone. Vivo has been focusing on the enhancements in night mode photography in its advertisements. With the dual punch-hole front cameras, great portrait mode and night mode selfies are its top selling points. Right now, the market is flooded with absolute value for money smartphones, let’s see where Vivo V19 stands.

Check our: Vivo V19 Quick Review

So, here is our honest review of Vivo V19 and whether you should buy it or not.

Vivo V19 comes with just two RAM option and two storage options. One with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage and the other variant with the same RAM but 256GB of storage. The Vivo V19 price in India starts from INR 27,990. The pricing of the higher variant is INR 31,990, which is a huge amount of money for a Vivo device. Vivo V19 will be available a few days after launch on Flipkart and Amazon and official Vivo authorised offline stores.

Vivo V19 comes in the same old packaging as seen in previous Vivo V-series smartphones. The box contents include:

• Vivo V19 Smartphone
• Transparent Case
• USB Type-C cable
• 33W Vivo FlashCharge 2.0 adapter
• In-ear style earphones
• User Guide

Before we talk in detail about the Vivo V19, let’s have a quick look at the key specifications. Here is the list of what the Vivo V19 is offering at an attractive price of Rs.27,990: 

• Display: 6.44-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED E3 display
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 712, liquid cooling system
• RAM & ROM: 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB
• Software: Funtouch OS 10 based on Android 10
• Rear cameras: 48MP(main) + 8MP(ultra-wide-angle) + 2MP(portrait) + 2MP(macro)
• Selfie camera: 32MP + 8MP dual selfie punch-hole
• Battery: 4500 mAh, 33W Vivo Flash Charge 3.0
• Weight: 176 g
• Dimensions: 159.01 x 74.17 x 8.54

With key specs discussed, let’s jump right into the review of the all-new Vivo V19.

From the design perspective, Vivo V19 is a decent smartphone. It has a 3D glass body to give it a premium feel. The quad rear cameras are placed vertically on the side of the back panel. With its rounded corners and sleek design, it is very comfortable to hold and do one-hand operations. The front, as well as back of the phone, is protected by the latest glass corning has to offer right now, the Corning’s gorilla glass 6. But the design could have been better if there was a matte finish on the back or anything else that would have protected it from being a fingerprint magnet. Vivo V19 comes with two colour variants: – Mystic silver and piano black.

The Vivo V19 has a clean looking back panel except for the quad-camera cut-out and the Branding of Vivo. It is a pretty sleek and lightweight device and weighs just 186.5 grams. The flawlessly merging camera of this phone gives it a very premium feel. A metallic frame is used in keeping together a display and the back panel. The metallic frame has volume rockers and power button on the right side of the phone, which comes in handy when you are trying to use your phone with just one hand. on the bottom of the phone, you have a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a USB Type C charging port and speaker grills. The design of Vivo V19 is not compromised, and it is top-notch.

The Vivo V19 houses a 6.44-inch Super AMOLED panel which runs on FHD+ resolution. It has very thin bezels on top and bottom and has a dual punch hole camera cut out at the upper right corner of the phone. The FHD+ display shows bright and crisp colours and can go up to brightness level of 800 nits which is insane and helps a lot when using the phone under direct sunlight. It has pretty decent viewing angles and can be a good choice for media consumption.

The Vivo V19 contains 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, which helps in media consumption and provides accurate colours while gaming. This is surely going to be a treat for Netflix addicts and gamers. The refresh rate of this AMOLED panel is standard 60 Hz which can be pretty disappointing for many users. Although, the display quality has increased, and the blue light filter is greatly enhanced. Now you can use your phone for a more extended period of time without possibly having a headache. This device houses a new E3 OLED screen instead of the older E2 OLED screen for better blue light filtration. V19 also supports the HDR 10 standard, which means better colours, higher dynamic range and more vibrant details.

As from the advertising, it is pretty evident that Vivo V19 is totally focused on non-tech-savvy people because it’s primary focus is on camera and design, which seems pretty promising to non-tech-savvy people. Vivo V19 runs on Snapdragon 712 processor and Adreno 616, which is disappointing at this price segment. Nearly all of the smartphones in this particular price segment run on a much better SoC. This device has a massive 8 Gigabyte LPDDR4X of RAM which compensates a bit for the processor. With UFS 2.1 it can transfer data at a pretty decent speed, but it still lacks behind because a UFS 3.0 storage option could have been much faster. You can run games on this device, and it can provide you with a decent gaming experience but nowhere near the competition as you can with a smartphone with 855+ SoC in the same price range. This phone is purely based on the needs of timid users who just want a decent looking phone with a stunning camera and can compromise on performance.

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Talking about the benchmark, scores of V19, the AnTuTu benchmark score was 218,900 for the 128 GB variant, and the Geekbench scores were 412 for single-core and 1600 in multi-core, which are better than Samsung Galaxy A51 powered by Exynos 9611. Snapdragon 712 holds up pretty decently in normal usage but it can also handle heavy games like PUBG and can run them on Ultra settings.

Vivo V19 uses Funtouch OS, which is based on Android 10 and contains tons of bloatware. Funtouch OS is still bugged and not optimized for heavy usage. The UI also has some previously installed apps like Amazon and daily hunt, which can be uninstalled with ease but some preloaded apps are difficult to uninstall and can send us unwanted notifications which we have to disable in settings. Funtouch OS also provides you with inbuilt dark mode, which is very useful and essential nowadays. The dark mode helps in saving your battery life and helps you enjoy deeper blacks by using its AMOLED display. The software has an integrated option to keep track of your time spend on each app named “Digital well being”. Multi-tasking is pretty smooth and you won’t see stutters in the UI. All the other functions of Funtouch OS are standard like you need to swipe from the bottom to get access to the control centre and swiping right on the screen will take you to the smart launcher, where you can get shortcuts to frequently used apps.

The Vivo V19 is a camera-centric phone having a total of six cameras all around the body in which two cameras are placed in the display cutout, and the other four are on the rear side of the phone. The quad rear camera cut-out includes a primary 48 MP f/1.79 sensor, an 8 Megapixel wide-angle lens, a 2 Megapixel macro lens and a 2 Megapixel depth sensor. Vivo is teasing the new “super night mode” for its V19 which seems pretty promising. It is said to have portrait mode in super low light with high image quality. The “Super macro camera” allows you to go as near as 4 cm to click a high-quality image, and it has quick focusing capabilities. The 12 MP ultra-wide-angle lens is said to have a 120-degree field of view, which seems decent. The 48 MP primary sensor has an enhanced EIS which helps in reducing shakiness and gives you a good quality video; it does not have an OIS which again, is pretty disappointing.

The improved AI of V19 helps you apply many filters to your videos and can impressively separate subjects from the background and give the videos an artistic touch. The front camera cut-out houses two camera sensors, and one is 32 MP primary sensor and the other one being 8 MP super-wide-angle camera. The front camera is also teased about having the “super night-mode”, and the AI helps in detecting faces and taking a high quality, less noisy picture of the subject with the help of its algorithm.
With its Aura glow technology, this device can handle photos in super lowlights by covering the face of the subject in an oval ring while the other parts of display throw light at the face of the subject. The super wide-angle lens gives you 25.6-degree extra field of view with least distortions. The wide-angle lens has a 105-degree field of view, which is fairly new in front of smartphone cameras. The Art portrait mode helps you to separate the background from the subject and can be pretty useful for people who like to give artistic touches to their videos.

The videos captured by the front camera are pretty stable and henceforth easy to focus on a single subject. This stability can be quite useful if you are a blogger or you like to film yourself a lot.

Vivo has done a pretty good job on the battery side. The phone houses a 4500 mAh Li-ion non-removable battery with a 33-watt fast charger included in the box. The device flaunts an energy-efficient 10nm chip which can help you last an entire day without charging. The fast charge 2.0 of Vivo can juice up your battery from 0 to 70% in just 40 minutes without overheating the device. The massive battery can last for a long time for your long gaming sessions, but the processor just ruins its power. And with so many compromises in the device, we expect wireless charging, and again we are disappointed as there is no wireless charging.

Vivo V19 has a single bottom-firing speaker which is pretty loud. But at this price range, you can get better alternatives like Realme x2 which has Dolby Atmos support. Due to the lack of stereo speakers, sound-tracking while gaming is not possible and the audio does not sound great. This type of sound and lack of stereo speakers is barely acceptable at this price range. It comes with a 3.5 mm audio jack which is a rarity nowadays.

Vivo V19 supports Bluetooth 5, dual-band wi-fi support, four satellite navigation systems, and 4G with VoLTE. It does not support Near field communication and FM radio.

The Vivo V19 has an in-display fingerprint scanner, which is a lot better than the previous Vivo smartphones. It is quick, accurate and has great animations. Apart from fingerprint, it also includes a reasonably decent face scanner, which can be a viable alternative for the fingerprint scanner, in cases when you are unable to use your hand to unlock your device. The face unlock is optical, which is a bit less secure, but it gives you the ease to unlock your phone without touching it.