This Vivo smartphone offers the privacy features of Android 12. Small audio and video indicators appear in the notification area when the phone’s microphone or camera is in use. Apart from all this, it also includes some Origin OS inspired Funtouch widgets. The notification tray and quick settings menu don’t look like the ones on the stock Android Google Pixel. It doesn’t have the powerful search feature in the app drawer, but the Notification History makes up for that and you can access it by scrolling down to the bottom of the notification tray (you need to turn it on in Settings first).
The company added a new Game Space app to the phone, but it wasn’t too long ago and it just tells you what games are on your phone and how long you’ve played them.
Vivo V23 Pro performed as expected in the standard benchmark test. It achieved scores of 950 and 3216 in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. At the same time, he scored 6,24,567 points on AnTuTu. This score is apparently on par with scores for mid-range smartphones and in the same price range.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC found in the is inferior to the processor score.
The phone’s gaming performance was good. The phone also got warm when playing games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends on the highest settings. However, it handled long gaming sessions well without showing any performance impact. Asphalt 9: Legends ran smoothly in 60fps mode, but Call of Duty wasn’t as nice as the touch sensitivity didn’t help me move quickly and kill enemies while playing. I lost several tournaments due to this slight delay in touch feedback. Even after lowering the graphics quality to the lowest level, the phone did not lag.
The Vivo V23 Pro has a single speaker, which is loud enough, but at higher volumes the sound feels muffled. Stereo sound is often found in phones in this price range, which is missing from this phone. To balance the sound, the phone should have had a stereo speaker setup.
The AMOLED panel of the phone is good. It gets bright enough and the colors are saturated, but the colors look a bit washed out in direct sunlight. The 90Hz refresh rate is sufficient, but a higher refresh rate is seen on many of this phone’s competitors. What makes the panel special are its curved edges. They don’t look much different in day-to-day use, but the phone’s mid-size notch does look a bit different, because most Android phones these days (below and above their price range) have a hole-punch cutout. , which gives a clean appearance to the display while taking up less space.
Despite being slim, the battery life of the phone is quite impressive and the phone provides decent battery backup. The phone lasted 12 hours and 7 minutes on our HD video loop test, which is slightly below average. In common use, the phone works for a whole day on a single charge, but it cannot be called the best in this segment. Users wanting more battery life will have to look elsewhere. The phone charges quickly with a 44W fast charger. Charges up to 65 percent in 30 minutes and fully charges in an hour.
Vivo V23 Pro cameras
The camera specifications of the Vivo V23 Pro are quite attractive. Both the front and rear cameras can record in 4K at 60fps. The front camera also has HDR video recording and dual LED flash units. The phone has a total of three rear cameras and two front cameras. Its main camera on the rear is 108-megapixel, the second camera is an 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens, and the third lens is a 2-megapixel macro.
The main camera on the front camera is 50-megapixel, which comes with autofocus. The second camera is an 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens, so group selfies can be easily taken. The camera interface is well designed and all the necessary settings are quickly accessible. For this, a menu has been provided at the top left edge (by holding the phone lengthwise), in which settings can be easily changed. It’s worth noting here that special video features like Steadiface and Super Night can only record 1080p at 30fps. HDR video is also limited to 1080p and 30fps for 4K. While 1080p recording is limited to 60fps in Super Stabilization mode.
Photos taken with the 108MP camera were saved at 12MP. Photos taken in daylight showed excessive saturation, but dynamic range and detail were decent. In the case of details in photos taken with the ultra-wide camera, it remained below average. Only photos taken in daylight could be used.
The 50MP selfie camera also saved photos in 12MP resolution. Selfies taken in daylight were sharp and clear and had good dynamic range. It also separated the background from the subject very well. Edge detection and details were very good in portrait mode. The same was seen in the portrait mode of the rear camera. Photos from the ultra-wide selfie camera were also amazing and much better than those from the ultra-wide rear camera. The 2-megapixel macro camera was useful for taking close-ups, but quality was average.
In low-light conditions, the main rear camera took decent photos with decent detail and dynamic range. Night mode shots were also better. Subjects appear sharp, but contrast mode photos look a bit artificial. There were a few photos where I noticed highlights were overexposed around streetlights or other light sources. Photos taken with the ultra-wide camera in night mode looked good on the phone screen, but the details on the monitor screen weren’t great.
Selfies taken in low light were sharp, and details came out much better with the spotlight flash than with the screen flash. Either way though, the photo quality cannot be rated higher than average. Night mode didn’t help either. In most cases, the main selfie camera had trouble focusing even after turning on the flash.
Speaking about the video, here too there was a slight disappointment. The company has paid a lot of attention to additional features, but left the basic features behind. The best video quality on the phone was found when shooting 4K video at 30fps. No details were found in the 1080p video recording in daylight. Stabilization was excellent at 1080p, but was nowhere to be seen when shooting 4K video at 60fps.
The phone has an Ultra stabilization mode that stabilizes video perfectly, but its resolution is limited to 1080p at 60fps. The background was overexposed when shooting selfie videos at any resolution in daylight. Subjects and backgrounds turned out fine in HDR mode, but exposure was overexposed and details were below average. Vivo has provided a stabilization feature called Steadiface, which shows smooth footage even in daylight and low light.
When shooting low-light videos with the selfie camera, the footage came out quite grainy. The Super Night video mode helped to reduce this greatly, but the frame rates were confusing. No details found when recording video at 1080p. Videos shot at 60fps were recorded quite dark, and stabilization wasn’t great either. There was a slight decrease in video smoothness during playback. Even after increasing the resolution to 4K, there was a problem with the stability of the video. At 4K at 60fps, images were quite dark and videos were shaky even when panning. Videos in Ultra Stabilization mode appeared slightly blurry and washed out.
Verdict
This phone is for those users who want a thin and light smartphone, or who want to experience the latest Android smartphone. Its color-changing panel is quite different. This phone is one of the few smartphones available in this segment, which has a curved edge screen. However, for users who want gaming performance and great battery life, this phone doesn’t quite meet the criteria.
The competition for the Vivo V23 Pro is very tough. After testing the Realme GT and iQoo 7 Legend in the review, I can say with full confidence that iQoo has the best camera among all. Apart from this, there are many other smartphones available in the market such as OnePlus 9R, Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro and recently launched Xiaomi 11T Pro which offer better gaming performance than Vivo V23 Pro. All these phones have stereo speakers and AMOLED display, including up to 120Hz refresh rate. IP53 rating is also available on Mi 11X Pro.
Photos taken with the Vivo V23 Pro’s camera are pretty impressive, but video recording needs a lot of improvement. This smartphone proves to be better than the V20 Pro in many aspects, but it cannot be called perfect. Its higher price makes the competition tougher for it, as it also has to compete with premium smartphones in this range, which perform better than it.