Vivo launched Y55s smartphone in its Y series last month. The smartphone is priced at Rs 12,490 and comes with 3GB RAM. Let’s see if the phone is worth its price tag in this detailed review.
Box Contents
- Vivo Y55s
- Charging adapter (5V-1A)
- Headset with microphone
- Micro USB cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick start guide and warranty information
- Silicon case
Display, Hardware and Design
The Vivo Y55s has the usual unibody metal design we have seen on a number of smartphones. We have the gold variant which blends well with the white bezels that are present on the top and bottom.
The phone measures 147.9 x 72.9 x 7.5mm and weighs just 142 grams. Although the phone is lightweight the build does not feel cheap. Coming to the display, the phone has a 5.2 inch HD (1280 x 720 pixels) and not a Full HD display which is a bummer, however the HD display is decent and is not a complete letdown.
There is a unique eye protection mode that ensures comfortable screen brightness by reducing blue light that causes strain on the eyes. This can be used at night and during low light in order to reduce strain on eyes.
On the top, the phone has a 5MP front facing camera, earpiece and usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors.
There are three capacitive touch buttons on the bezels below the display. The buttons are not backlit but offer haptic feedback.
The SIM slot which holds micro and nano SIM card is present on the left while the right side houses the power/lock button and volume rockers. On the top you have the 3.5mm audio jack, microSD card slot and a microphone. A micro USB port, loudspeaker grill and a secondary microphone are situated at the bottom.
The speaker output is loud and clear, but since the grill is present only on the right side, the sound focuses only on one side instead of coming from both the sides.
The phone has metal back which is not too slippery. It has a 13MP rear camera with LED flash at the back along with Vivo branding. The 5.2 inch display feels compact to hold and results in easy handling, especially for people with small hands.
Camera
The Vivo Y55s sports a 13MP rear camera with LED Flash which is pretty good. Daylight and macro shots came out nice and produced good color and were decent in clarity. The flash is also good and is not very over bearing. The low light images came out grainy still were not bad at all.
The camera app is pretty neat and has different modes like HDR, night, ultra HD, PPT, professional, slow and time-lapse. You can take photos by tapping the camera button, saying cheese and by showing your palm. Check out the camera samples below. (Click for high-resolution images)
Daylight
HDR ON
HDR OFF
HDR OFF
HDR ON
Low Light
Flash
Front camera
The front camera is decent for selfies especially if there is good lighting. A Face beauty mode offers features like Buffing, Skin Tone and Whitening. This mode can be used while taking photos using front as well as rear camera. There is a Fair to Rosy slider that can be adjusted as per your preference.
Video
The phone records video in 1080p and the clarity is pretty good. Audio recording while shooting the video is also decent.
Software, UI and Apps
The Vivo Y55s runs Funtouch OS 3.0 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. I personally like the UI as it is quite attractive and offers a lot of customization options. It comes without an app drawer so all apps are front and center. There is dynamic sliding effect that lets you select from various patterns (Cylinder, Turn, Jump, Stack and so on) in which the screen slides. Different widgets can also be added to the screen.
Next up, you can set different home and lock screen wallpapers. Also present are numerous theme options that can be selected from iTheme. You can even change the type and size of the fonts. Sliding from bottom of the screen brings out the Quick Setting panel. It comes with slider controls for display and volume. At the bottom you have quick shortcuts for Wi-Fi, Flashlight, Data, Bluetooth and others. You can customize these quick actions as per your choice.
Apps
The phone comes with built-in apps EasyShare, WPS Office, vivoCloud, Lock, iTheme, iManager, UC Browser and the usual Google apps along with Duo. Facebook, WhatsApp and few apps are pre-installed and can be uninstalled. Out of 16GB internal storage, you get 8.16GB of available space.
There is a Smart Motion feature that offers various quick actions smart wake, smart turn on/off screen, smart call and so on. There are a number of handy quick actions like draw ‘m’ to play music, double tap to turn screen off, wave your palm over the top of the phone to answer hands free among others.
There is a Smart multi-screen feature which as the name suggest splits the screen in two. When a message is received with an app running in full screen view, the message will show as a floating icon. Tapping the icon will split the screen in two and those apps will be displayed side by side as you can see in the screenshot above.
Music Player and FM Radio
The phone has a native music and video player. The UI for the music player is simple and clean. It comes with BBE which can be enabled at the time of listening the music using earphones. This offers a number of equalizer options. The audio experience using earphones is decent. In case of FM Radio, you can set up to six stations and comes with auto scanning and recording. The UI for Radio is also simple and neat.
Calling and Messaging
The dialer and keyboard are pretty much standard. However, you can go for Gboard (Google Keyboard) or any third-party keyboard.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
Both the SIMs (micro+nano) support 4G, but you can enable 4G only in one SIM at a time, while the other goes to 2G. Other connectivity options on the phone includes the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. It does not support NFC though. The call quality is good.
The phone supports VoLTE.
Performance and Benchmarks
The phone is powered by a 1.4GHz Quad-Core Snapdragon 425 processor with Adreno 308 GPU and comes with 3GB RAM. It performs well and does not fail during the time of multi-tasking. We did not experience any lags during our testing period. Gaming performance is also decent and the phone did not heat up most of the time.
It scored 36084 points in Antutu Benchmark.
It scored 7391 points in 3DMark Ice Storm benchmark.
It scored 1041 points in Vellamo Metal benchmark.
It scored 1367 points in Vellamo Multicore benchmark.
Battery life
The phone has a 2,730mAh battery that is good. There are low power consumption and super power-saving modes.
It achieved One Charge rating of 9 hours 42 minutes due to great talktime. We will bring you the complete set of battery life test results soon.
Conclusion
The Vivo Y55s is a decent phone that scores when it comes to camera as the images turn out to be crisp, clear and bring out good color. It has a good build and is lightweight. However, at a price point of Rs. 12,490 the phone does not come with a fingerprint sensor which is a letdown. It supports dual SIM cards and has a dedicated micro SD card slot which is great. To sum it up, here are the pros and cons.
Pros
- Good build
- Good Camera
- Decent performance
Cons
- No fingerprint sensor
- Overpriced