vivo launched its V50 smartphones in India last week, as the successor to V40, which was launched last year. This gets a familiar camera setup with ZEISS optics, quad-curved screen, IP69 ratings, and bigger battery, while retaining the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC. Is this the worthy upgrade to the V40? Let use dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- vivo V50 8GB + 256GB version in Titanium Grey colour
- Silicon case
- USB Type-C Cable
- 90W FlashCharge wall adapter
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick start guide and Warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
The vivo V50 sports a 6.77-inch (2392 × 1080 pixels) FHD+ 20:9 aspect ratio, 387 PPI 41° quad curved AMOLED display and 120Hz refresh rate. The display is bright even outdoors under sunlight, since it has an overall maximum brightness of up to 1300 nits, a slight increase from 1200 nits in the predecessor. The screen has up to 4500 nits peak brightness, which is the same. The colour output good as well since it has 1.07 billion colors. Even though the resolution is down from 1.5K to 1080p, the quad curved screen looks good.
You can select from standard (default), professional and bright screen colour modes. You can select smart switch that can switch between 60 Hz/90 Hz/120 Hz, 30 Hz or force it to 60Hz or 120Hz. It has 480Hz touch sampling rate. The phone has up to 3840Hz High-frequency PWM dimming.
Visual enhancement optimizes the color and contrast in apps like YouTube, Netflix and Prime Video for more vivid display effects. It has Diamond Shield protection on the front, which is a vivo and Schott Xensation collaboration. vivo says that this has 50% more strength compared to the predecessor.
It also has HDR 10+ support, which works for YouTube and Netflix. The phone doesn’t have a notification LED, but this has an always-on-display that shows contextual info and notifications all day or as per schedule.
The phone has a 50MP front camera inside the punch-hole. There is an earpiece on the top edge which works as a secondary speaker. There is a small chin below the screen. It has an in-display optical fingerprint scanner. The haptic feedback is decent, but there is no option to control the strength manually.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the phone has a power button and volume rockers on the right. The bottom part is crammed with a dual SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and a speaker grill. The secondary microphone is present on the top along with vent for speakers.
The phone has a matte glass back, and the Starry Night color variant uses India’s First 3D-Star Technology that changes the phone into a living, breathing canvas that interacts with its environment. This time, the phone gets both IP68 and IP69 ratings for dust and water resistance.
The Titanium Grey colour that we have is just 7.39mm thick and weighs 189 grams, even though it packs a huge 6000mAh battery.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with f/1.88 aperture, Omnivision OV50E 1/1.55″ sensor, OIS
- 50MP ultra-wide camera with Samsung JN1 sensor, f/2.0 aperture
- 50MP auto focus front-facing camera with Samsung JN1 sensor, f/2.0 aperture
The phone has aura light, which is now called AI Studio Light portrait, and it is now brighter.
The camera UI is the same as other phones running Funtouch OS. It includes several features such as AR stickers, Pro mode, long exposure, 50MP mode, supermoon, underwater photography mode and more. Even though the phone has a 50MP rear camera, the final output is 12.5MP in size after pixel binning, and the front camera output is around 14MP.
Coming to the camera quality, the daylight shots are brilliant, and it is recommended to enable HDR option which automatically switches on HDR according to the shot, so that the dynamic range is good. The camera can focus quickly.
The 50MP ultra-wide camera does a good job, and it can also shoot macro, but macro shot with the main camera looks better. Even though this doesn’t have a dedicated portrait camera, it does a decent job when it comes to edge detection. The phone has ZEISS optics and several ZEISS Style Portrait options. There is also India exclusive wedding portrait studio.
Low light shots are good with a lot of details and less noise, and the OIS helps as well to stabilize the images. The night mode automatically enables ultra dark mode if there is very less light, and that makes it better, but it takes a few seconds to process. There is also supermoon mode, which is a good addition, but you can’t compare it to flagships.
The 50MP AF front camera is also good in daylight. The portrait shots from the front camera were also good, with a good edge detection. There is screen flash for low light shots.
Check out some camera samples below
It can record videos at 4k resolution at up to 30 fps from the front and rear cameras. It has standard and ultra stabilization, but the resolution is down to 1080p in standard and ultra options since it crops the content. OIS does a good job in stabilization. There is a ZEISS cinematic portrait video option which is limited to 1080p 24 fps.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 15 with Funtouch OS 15 on top. It runs Android security patch for February 2025. The phone will get 3 Android OS updates and 4 years of security updates, similar to the older models.
Funtouch OS 15 brings vivo’s Priority Scheduling model for 15% faster app startup time, has zRAM compression algorithm, resulting in a 40% boost in compression speed, vivo’s Origin Animation for a more natural and intuitive user experience. The Lightning-Speed Engine offers faster app launches, and Aqua Dynamic Effect adds a visually pleasing touch to system interactions.
AI Image Lab uses artificial intelligence to automatically improve photo quality, remove shadows from documents, erase unwanted content with AI eraser and image cutouts. Live wallpapers are now seamless, and there is also customized call background. There is Link to Windows that enhances collaboration between your vivo device and PC. It also has Circle to Search feature.
Out of 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, about 7.3GB is usable, out of which 3GB is free when the default apps are running in the background. There is additional 8GB RAM expansion feature. Out of 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage, 219.9GB is free out of the box. It is disappointing that this still uses UFS 2.2 storage at this price tag.
Apart from the usual set of utility and Google apps, it comes preloaded with a lot of apps such as Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, PhonePe, and Netflix. These apps can be uninstalled, but they come back after reset.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has an optical in-display fingerprint sensor which immediately unlocks the phone just by keeping your finger on the sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. There are different animation styles that display when you unlock, which you can disable. The phone also has face unlock that can unlock the phone in seconds, but it is not as secure as fingerprint.
Music and Multimedia
The default Music Player also has equalizer and DeepField sound effects. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. There is audio super resolution, and super audio features. Audio through the stereo speakers are good. Audio through the headphones is good.
This has Widevine L1 so that you can play HD content on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and other streaming apps. It also supports HDR playback on Netflix and YouTube.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has the usual set of connectivity features such as 5G with support for n1/n3/n5/n8/n28/n40/n66/n77/n78 bands. Jio and Airtel 5G work out of the box. It also has dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4 + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.4, GPS + GLONASS, but doesn’t have NFC support. It also has USB OTG support. The phone also has carrier aggregation. We did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume is good, even though it is present on the top edge.
The vivo V50’s body SAR is 0.84 W/Kg and head SAR is at 0.99/Kg which is almost similar to the V40 and is well under the limit in India which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g).
Performance and Benchmarks
vivo once again sticks to Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 Mobile Platform. It has 1+3+4 architecture, as the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. This uses 1 x 2.63 GHz ARM Cortex-A715 prime core, 3 x A715 performance cores at up to 2.4 GHz, and 4 x Cortex-A510 efficiency cores at up to 1.8 GHz.
It is fabricated using the TSMC 4nm Process Technology. It promises 15% improvements in CPU performance compared to Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. The phone has a 25489 mm² cooling area and 9 sensors that lower the core temperature to 14°C, according to the company.
This uses Adreno 720 GPU. We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games, and it also didn’t get hot. In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 98.6% which is good, but it is slightly less than V40. The temperature shot up from 33 to 44 degrees, which is also slightly more than the V40. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 6000mAh (typical) battery, a slight upgrade compared to 5500mAh in the V40. It can easily last for a day with heavy use and for two days with typical use with 5G enabled and multimedia, thanks to the optimization. I got about 5 of screen on time with close to 2 days of mixed Wi-Fi and 5G use with 32% charge remaining, so it should last me for more than 2 days.
Since the phone has support for 90W fast charging, it can charge up to 50% in about half an hour, and 100% takes less than an hour. The company says that it can retain 80% battery health even after 1600 charge-discharge cycles with the smart charging algorithm.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 34,999, the vivo V50 sticks to the same price. Even though it excels in camera, and gets a bigger battery, the performance is still not on par with other phones in the price range since it sticks with the same SoC and the display resolution is now FHD+ compared to 1.5K even though it gets a quad-curved panel. It still lacks NFC support in India, which was the case for the older V series phones.
Pricing and availability
The vivo V50 is priced at Rs. 34,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model, 8GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 36,999 and the top-end 12GB + 512GB model is priced at Rs. 40,999. It is now available from vivo.com, Amazon.in, Flipkart and offline stores.
Alternatives
The HONOR 200 is a good alternative in the price range, and it has a telephoto camera, and a smoother user experience even though it has the same SoC. For the performance, there is POCO F6, the latest POCO X7 Pro, and even the OnePlus Nord 4 at a cheaper rate.
Pros
- 120Hz curved AMOLED HDR display is good
- Good cameras
- Smooth performance
- Sleek design
- IP69 ratings
- Excellent battery life, 90W fast charging
Cons
- No NFC support
- Same old SoC
- A lot of preloaded apps