The X70 Pro is one of their latest flagship smartphones from vivo in India, that promises to deliver a flagship level camera experience, a beautifully designed body made out of high quality materials and a smooth software experience. It comes with a custom version of MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity-1200 processor and features a whole host of custom-developed Zeiss-lens camera effects. So how does it perform and is the X70 Pro worth its price? Let’s find out.
Box Contents
- vivo X70 Pro in Cosmic Black color
- 44W FlashCharge USB Power Adapter (11V-4A)
- Type-C earphones + Type-C connector
- Type-C to USB cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Warranty and Quick start guide
- Protective case
- Protective film (Already applied on to the display)
Display, Hardware and Design
The vivo X70 Pro is a beautiful, slim and sleek smartphone. It is made out of premium materials all throughout, with glass in both the front and back, and metal railings on the sides. The glass back in particular has a ‘Fluorite AG’ finish with crystals precipitated on top that does a good job with hiding fingerprints. It feels premium to the touch, however it does make the phone rather slippery to hold. As mentioned earlier, the X70 Pro is very slim, measuring about 7.99mm. I would highly recommend using the included protective case for the X70 Pro, or get your case.
The metal railings have a matte finish with cutouts around for signal coverage. The power and volume buttons are both on the right edge, and they feel decent to click. The USB Type-C port, speaker grill and dual SIM card tray can be found on the bottom edge, and on the top edge, there is an IR blaster for remote control functionality. Regarding the weight, the X70 weighs 183 grams, which is reasonable. More importantly, it feels balanced to hold in the hand.
The bezels all around the display are very thin, which adds to the premium look of the device. The earpiece grill is at the very top edge of the display and notably, it does not function as a secondary speaker unit. The X70 Pro comes with only a mono speaker, which is unfortunate for a device that is priced this high. Another weakness of the X70 is the haptic motor, which is one of the weakest I have experienced among flagship devices.
The camera bump on the rear is quite significant, which is expected considering the hardware inside, and the 32MP front camera is housed within a punch hole in the top center of the display.
For biometric authentication, there is an in-display fingerprint sensor that is placed near the bottom of the display at a comfortable height.
Coming to the display, the X70 Pro uses a 6.56-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2376 x 1080, a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and a response rate of up to 240Hz. It uses an E5 AMOLED LTPS panel from Samsung Display, which is more power efficient and should contribute towards a longer battery life. vivo does not provide the maximum brightness value, but from my experience the display gets plenty bright and sunlight readability was not an issue.
The colours displayed were vibrant and had excellent contrast, blacks were wonderfully dark and overall, watching the content was an enjoyable experience. You can select between Standard, Professional and Bright for colours, and also adjust the colour temperature manually if you’d like. According to vivo, there is support for HDR10+, but it seemed unavailable in this phone, and I’m assuming it is just a software bug that could be fixed later. HDR10 content however did play properly in the YouTube app.
With a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, the experience was buttery smooth when navigating the UI. The phone does not support variable refresh rate, instead it only has the option to force either 120Hz, 60Hz along with an option to enable Smart Switch, which will automatically switch between the two refresh rates based on the content.
While there is no notification light, the X70 Pro does come with an Always-On-Display that comes with loads of customization features. You can customize the style, choose when to display and show notification from a select list of apps. I did notice a slight decrease in power consumption when the AOD was set to be display all day, but it was not significant.
Camera
As is with nearly every Vivo flagship smartphone, there is a great focus around the camera experience. Starting the raw specifications, on the back it features a primary 50MP gimbal camera with an f/1.75, a 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera with f/1.98 aperture, a 12MP 50mm portrait camera with f/2.2 aperture and a 8MP periscope telephoto with a 5x optical zoom and an f/3.4 aperture. On the front, there is a 32MP selfie camera with f/2.4 aperture.
We have covered the quality of the photos and videos from the X70 Pro in detail, and you can check it out here. If I had to summarize it, the rear camera setup can produce some pleasing photos in good daylight conditions. In low light conditions, the output is quite impressive too, thanks to its gimbal stabilization technology. The various portrait modes supported are fun to use, especially the various custom Zeiss bokeh effects. Regarding videos and the front camera, the quality is good enough and nothing exceptional.
Here are a couple of samples from the x70 Pro:
Software, UI and Apps
The phone comes with Android 11 out-of-the-box, with vivo’s Funtouch OS 12 layered on top. At the time of this review, the phone was running the October 2021 Android security patch, which is a little dated at the moment. Vivo has confirmed that the phone will be receiving an upgrade to Android 12.
When setting up the phone, it did come with quite a few pre-installed apps such as Amazon, BYJU’s, PhonePe and YT Music.
If you have recently used a vivo smartphone, Funtouch OS 12 will feel very familiar with its UI, navigations and animations. For new users, I believe it is quite easy to use the software, and there are tons of customization options for many elements of the UI. There are various options for themes, accent colours, icons and more.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that is placed about 2cms above the bottom bezel. The sensor operates quickly and there were rarely any hiccups when unlocking the phone. However, it was definitely not the quickest fingerprint sensor out there. Biometric authentication can be used for locking apps and also for payments services. Users can store a maximum of 5 fingerprints at a time. The phone also supports face unlock, however it is not as secure as unlocking with your fingerprints.
As is with most Vivo smartphones, you can change the animation around the fingerprint sensor when unlocking, and you can also change the design of the fingerprint icon, which I found is unique to vivo smartphones.
Music and Multimedia
The X70 Pro comes with its own Music app, although it does come with YT Music pre-installed if you want to use that. There is no support for Dolby Atmos, but there is support for ‘Ear-customized sound effects’ where you can select your age group and the phone will apparently customize the sound profile accordingly.
Regarding speakers, the X70 Pro unfortunately only comes with a mono down-firing speaker. Many smartphones in the price range come with dual speakers, and it is just disappointing to see a mono speaker on the X70 Pro. The speakers get moderately loud at maximum volume, with a little amount of distortion. It is not very clear at high volumes, and the bass is clearly lacking.
The phone is Widevine L1 certified, which means HD playback is supported on Netflix. Regarding HDR, there is support for HDR10 and HLG, but there is no support for HDR10+ though. YouTube HDR playback works fine, but there is also no support for HDR playback in Netflix, and it is unsure if vivo will add it in a future update.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The X70 Pro comes with dual SIM with dual standby, supports 5G connectivity, with a total of 4 bands including n3, n5, n77 and n78, along with 4G LTE. It supports VoLTE with Carrier aggregation, and it supports VoWiFi. I did not face any issues during calls, the earpiece was loud, and I did not notice any unusual battery drops either.
Other support for wireless technologies include Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, however there is no support for NFC. For GPS, it supports GPS, BEIDOU, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS, A-GPS, Cellular Positioning, WLAN positioning and also NavIC.
The body SAR value is 1.09 W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.21 W/Kg which is quite high, which could be explained due to its support for 5G connectivity. It was, however, under the limit in India, which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g).
Performance and Benchmarks
The X70 Pro is one of the many smartphones that feature the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 CPU, and I believe it is one of the most expensive smartphones with this chip. It isn’t a regular Dimensity 1200, however. vivo has worked with MediaTek and made some improvements to the chip’s ISP and the APU, and they have named the chip – MediaTek Dimensity 1200-vivo 5G Platform.
The GPU is an Arm Mali-G77 MC9 chip, which offers smooth gaming performance, even in demanding titles such as Genshin Impact. The phone does get hot when playing 3D titles, and occasionally during long gaming sessions, I would notice a bit of throttling. When recording 4K 60FPS, the device does get warm, but it never overheated.
Here are some benchmarks of the device:
Battery life
Coming to battery life, the X70 Pro has a 4450mAh (typical) battery inside. The Dimensity 1200-vivo is not a very hungry chip and along with its E5 AMOLED display, the X70 Pro has quite good battery life in my experience. With light to medium usage, I was able to easily nearly days worth of usage with about 8 hours of screen-on time. With heavy use that includes gaming, calls and GPS use, you can comfortably last a day with about 4-5 hours of screen on-time.
The phone supports vivo’s 44W Flashcharge technology that can charge the phone from 0-60% in 30 mins and 0-100% in 1 hour and 10 mins. It isn’t as fast as some of the competitors who offer 67W fast charging, however, it is plenty fast for most users.
Conclusion
Vivo’s flagship X series of smartphones have always focused around great design and great cameras, and the X70 Pro certainly delivers on those fronts. Along with that, the phone is made out of high-quality materials, features a good display, long battery life with fast charging and it even has an IR blaster.
The Dimensity 1200 processor however is a bit of a weird choice for a smartphone that is above Rs. 40,000. There are a few competition devices that offer the faster Snapdragon 888 processor for a lower price, such as the OnePlus 9RT and Xiaomi Mi 11T Pro 5G. However, I didn’t notice any slowdowns during my review of the X70 Pro, and for most users the Dimensity 1200 is a good enough processor.
Other downsides of the X70 Pro are the lack of dual speakers and the lack of HDR10+ support. I also wish there was some form of IP rating, considering that it is a flagship device.
Pricing and availability
The vivo X70 Pro has the following prices:
- 8GB + 128GB version : Rs 46,990
- 8GB + 256GB version : Rs. 49,990
- 12GB + 256GB version : Rs. 52,990
It is available on Flipkart, on vivo’s website and through offline stores.