Friends+Design
- Eye-catching, attractive design, like a lot of recent Vivo and Oppo phones - the back of the phone is all sorts of interesting, with gradient style colorways - it’s definitely going to turn heads
- On the front, the phone is all screen - and looks really damn good - it's an expansive viewing field that is as close to the concept of all-screen devices as we’ve gotten to so far
- This is not a small phone, but the gently curved edges and back make it very comfortable to hold - Vivo has also done a really good job with weight distribution, and the phone nestles very easily in the palm of your hand
- There’s a direct shortcut for Google Assistant on the left side of the phone - double clicking the button activates Google Lens or Vivo’s own Jovi image recognition
- The in-display fingerprint scanner works perfectly well
- There's also perfectly capable face recognition that uses the unique pop-up selfie camera (takes less than half a second to pop-out)
- The volume rocker is a little bit too high up, sometimes requiring a little shimmy to reach
- The location of the fingerprint touchpoint for the in-display scanner is a little too low on the screen and you might find yourself having to bend your thumb over a bit too much to unlock the phone
- Coming as the the Vivo V15 Pro does with a glass back, the usual caveats apply - the phone is slippery, and is nearly impossible to keep the back clean of fingerprints and smudges (having said that, Vivo is throwing a well-designed case in the box, which takes care of these issues)
Display
- The large, vibrant, 6.23 inch display Super AMOLED display of course stands out - the screen is nice and sharp with crisp text rendering - it's also excellent for media consumption, with no notch to disrupt a clean experience - it also gets sufficiently bright for outdoor use in direct sunlight
- The lack of Widewine L1 certification means that the phone can’t stream HD videos on Netflix or Amazon (they will stream at 540p resolution)
Software
- On it's own, FunTouch OS UI is pretty functional, customizable, and smooth
- It is still pretty much a clone of iOS though - and that might not be everyone's cup of tea
- It also packs a bunch of bloatware (mostly un-installable, thankfully)
- It's also somewhat buggy at places - for instance the aggressive battery management means that it sometimes force closes apps unexpectedly
Performance
- The Snapdragon 675 is a pretty good performer, just a notch below the 710 is real life use cases - navigating through the interface and jumping between apps is very smooth, and playing games like PUBG is also a very enjoyable experience (even with graphics set to high)
- It does get slightly warm though, when put under heavy continuous load
Camera
- Pretty decent set of rear cameras - especially in day light - the Vivo V15 Pro has three different rear camera modules - there’s a 5MP depth-sensing camera, an 8MP wide-angle sensor and of course a 48MP primary camera - while you can shoot full resolution, 48MP, shots from the camera, it works best when pixel-binned to 12MP
- Particularly useful is the ultra wide lens - which gives a really nice way to get a very different perspective
- Very good popup selfie camera - that pops out in under half a second - and produces some good quality images in most lighting conditions - there's also a very powerful beauty mode, if you are into that sort of stuff - overall, as far as selfie cameras go, this is one of the best, not just in this price range, but on any smartphone
- Sound quality during video recording is pretty average
- Overall, the rear cameras are good, but they are still a notch below the top competitors - the Pocophone, Honor View 20 and OnePlus 6T (on the other hand, the front camera of the V15 Pro is arguably better than that of these three)
Connectivity
- Uses the old microUSB standard, instead of the modern USB-C
Battery
- Good battery life with a 3700mAh battery -with moderate use the phone can give you up to 1.5 days
- Supports fast charging with Vivo’s “Dual Engine” charging - you get a 25 percent charge in 15 minutes - and a full charge in about 1 and a half hours
Verdict
- Overall, the V15 Pro is another great, innovative device from the Vivo camp - you can go for it if you want a good balance between performance and design, and an amazing, true 'full screen' display - if on the other hand you are looking for the best rear camera experience or the best performance - look instead at the Poco F1, OnePlus 6T and Honor View 20
