Vivo V25 5G Review – Style Meets Camera

Vivo has a long history of making overpriced phones but things are changing now. Its latest Vivo V25 5G is an example of the same. The phone offers a stunning design and unique colour-changing back.

Apart from design, the phone does a good job in the camera department as well, as expected from Vivo. However, will a cool design and nice camera setup be enough to justify its price tag? And that is why the company has tried to offer a decent combination of hardware and software in every aspect.

Moreover, the phone brings a lot of upgrades over its predecessor which we will find out in this Vivo V25 5G review. So let’s start without any further ado.

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The Vivo V25 5G comes in two different variants in India. The base variant costs Rs. 27,999 for 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. While the top variant comes at a price of 31,999 for 12GB RAM and 256GB storage.

The phone is available in two different colour options: Surfing Blue and Elegant Black. You can buy the phone online directly from Vivo’s official website or other platforms like Reliance Digital, Croma and more.

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The Vivo V25 5G packs the following items inside the box:

• Handset
• USB Type-C cable
• 44W charger
• Protective Case
• Documents
• Protective Film (pre-applied)

Before we talk in detail about the Vivo V25 5G, let’s see what the on-paper specs look like:

• Display: 6.44 inches AMOLED
• Chipset: MediaTek Dimensity 900
• RAM & ROM: 8GB 128GB
• Software: Android v12
• Rear camera: 64MP + 8MP + 2MP
• Selfie camera: 50 MP
• Battery: 4500 mAh
• Weight: 186 grams
• Dimensions: 159.2 x 74.2 x 7.8 mm

Let’s start off with the design. The Vivo V25 5G offers a really stylish design which might look normal to you, but there’s something more. You take it out in the sunlight and then the magic happens. It features a colour-changing back panel which absorbs the light and gets darker when sunlight falls on it.

I have the Surfing Blue colour variant with me for review which looks astonishing. The backside is made of plastic with a smooth frosted glass finish which gives a glittery shine when struck by light.

The good thing here is that it doesn’t attract fingerprints and smudges. The phone comes with flat edges and curved corners which gives it a premium vibe and feels good to hold in hands. It weighs relativity light at 186g and has a slim profile at just 7.79mm thickness.

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You will see a large camera unit on the back which houses two big and one small lens. There is a very subtle Vivo branding on the bottom. Overall, the phone looks fresh and premium.

Talking about buttons and port placements, the right side houses a power button along with volume rockers. The left side is totally clean, while the top side has a microphone. The bottom side features a SIM tray slot, USB Type-C port and a speaker grill.

The Vivo V25 5G features a triple camera setup on the back. This includes a 64MP OIS main camera, 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 2MP macro sensor. You get a 50MP selfie camera on the front. The camera is where Vivo does the best of its work and we can see the same here.

The primary camera takes good shots in daylight with plenty of details. The images were clear and crisp with a wide dynamic range. Colour tones were close to natural. I had a hard come focusing on the subject, for some reason, the lens was automatically losing its focus every now and then.

Portrait mode was likewise good. The subject was well separated from the background however, sometimes it blurred the corners of the subject as well. The portrait shots were detailed and crisp with good colour accuracy.

The ultra-wide images were just decent. It captured more area but loses on details. The images I took came out to be soft and blurry at the corners. Although colours in the images were retained well.

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The macro shots were okay-ish. Not too good not too bad. The macro shots looked nice until you zoom in, and then you realise that they are just over-sharpened images.

You see some nice modes in the camera app like High-Resolution mode, Live Photo, Slo-mo, Pro mode, Vlog mode, Dual View and more.

Coming over to the front, the selfie camera took some nice selfies. The selfies were packed with details and were super clear. I could zoom in and see my beard hair. But the dynamic range on the front camera is not as good as the main camera. The colours appear to be washed out in the background.

Talking about videos, the phone can record up to 4K videos at 30fps from both the main and front camera. The Ultra stabilisation mode is only available when you lower the resolution to 1080p at 60fps, however the frame is heavily cropped. The video quality is great from both the main and selfie camera with good details and colours.

Coming over to the battery, the Vivo V25 packs a 4500mAh battery which offers a decent battery backup. I know this is less than what other smartphones offer in this price range but it still manages to deliver acceptable backup.

You can easily get one full day of casual usage from this phone. Light users can even expect the phone to survive the other day till afternoon. I got about 6 hours of screen on time with my normal use. My usage involved some Instagram scrolling, playing games and watching some videos on YouTube.

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The V25 comes with 44W fast charging support, which is less than what the competition offers. These days phones under 30K are coming with 60W, 80W, and even 120W fast charging support, but Vivo has decided to go with much less 44W support.

Anyways, the 44W charger takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to fully charge the phone from 0 to 100 per cent.

The Vivo V25 comes with an FHD+ 6.44 inches AMOLED display. It has a refresh rate of 90Hz and a peak brightness of 1300 nits. The display gets bright enough for outdoor visibility. You can also change the refresh rate in the display settings.

You get three options to set the refresh rate: a standard 60Hz, a fast 90Hz and a Smart Switch mode which automatically sets the refresh rate depending on the usage scenario and power consumption.

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Since it’s an AMOLED display, the colours on the screen are vivid and vibrant. The text and app icons are super clear and crisp. You will notice a water drop notch at the top which seems a bit dated.

The display has thin bezels all around with a slightly thicker chin at the bottom. This does not spoil the viewing experience in any way. Matter of fact, I really enjoyed my gaming sessions and watching videos on Vivo V25.

The phone comes with HDR10+ certification, which means you can watch HDR content on supported apps.

The Vivo V25 is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 900 chipset which is paired with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You can further add 8GB of virtual RAM using the internal storage, which makes for a total of 16GB RAM. Now I don’t think this will give you any major performance upgrade, so chuck it.

The phone runs smoothly and glides through usual tasks without any issues. I did not notice any shutters or lags while using the phone. The apps loaded up quickly, and multitasking was also a breeze.

Talking about numbers, the phone scored 709 in single-core performance and 2030 in multi-core performance.

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Now it was time to hit some games. I tried a couple of popular games like Call of Duty Mobile, Apex Legends Mobile and Asphalt 9. All three games ran flawlessly on medium to high settings.

CoD Mobile could go up to High graphics with Very High frame rates, and I noticed the gameplay was pretty smooth with no lags. Similarly, Apex Legends Mobile also ran without any issues at UlraHD graphics and High frame rates. However, I noticed the phone got a bit warm on the back after playing for half an hour.

There is also an Ultra Gaming mode which automatically activates as you start a game. It lets you choose the performance settings and offers a handful of features like screen recording, voice changer, blocking incoming calls and more.

The Vivo V25 runs on Funtouch OS 12, which is based on Android 12. Funtouch OS 12 offers tons of customisation and personalisation options. The UI was pretty simple and easy to use.

You can customise the Always On Display, Themes, Wallpaper and even UI colour. There are also standard Android 12 features like Privacy Dashboard and Digital Wellbeing. You can see which apps have access to which permissions and manage them as well.

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You also get features like Smart Motion, Quick Action, One-Handed mode and more. Smart Motion lets you use gestures to activate some features like Turing on the flashlight. Quick Action lets you enable a specified function by pressing and holding the volume down button.

Apart from this, you can change the fingerprint animation, face unlock animation as well as charging animation in the settings.

Sadly, the phone is packed with a bunch of third-party apps like Dailyhunt, Moj, Spotify, ShareChat, Byju’s, Josh and more. Thankfully, you can uninstall these apps from the app settings.

The Vivo V25 comes with a single bottom-firing speaker which produces good sound quality. The audio coming out of the single speaker was clear and got pretty loud. However, I would have appreciated if Vivo gave a stereo speaker setup.

Talking about connectivity, the V25 5G comes with 5G connectivity with support for 5 5G bands. These include n1, n3, n41, n77, and n78. Other connectivity options are Dual-band Wi-Fi, 5.2 BlueTooth and GPS.

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The phone features an in-display fingerprint scanner which is quick, reliable and pretty accurate. It always recognised my fingerprint in one go, and I didn’t face any issue of having to try multiple times. You can also use the face unlock feature, which works equally well in proper lighting.