Vivo V23 Pro First Look

The popularity of creating vertical videos is relatively a new movement on social media. Some of the most popular social media platforms are now encouraging vertical video content which includes Reels for Instagram and Shorts for Youtube. With this implementation, the importance of creating selfie videos is increasing rapidly in today’s youth. This increases the urge of an average consumer to upgrade to a smartphone that can fulfill their needs at an affordable price.

On 29th April 2021, Vivo Introduced the Vivo V21 5G which brings the attention of the consumers with its world’s first 44MP OIS Selfie Camera and made its place swapping the Vivo V20 Pro 5G which was launched earlier in December 2020. Now, It’s a New Year: and Vivo has stacked its two new contenders to target the youth who’s not just obsessed with capturing selfies but also attracting the users with its mesmerizing India’s first colour-changing fluorite AG glass. Enter Vivo V23 Pro 5G. Is it ready to go up against its competitors? After using it for two weeks, Here’s our review of the Vivo V23 Pro 5G Review. Before heading towards review, let’s have a look at the specifications of this device

Vivo V23 Pro 5G Full Specifications

General
Brand Vivo
Model V23 Pro 5G
Release date 5th January 2021
Launched in India No
Form factor Touchscreen
Body type Glass
Dimensions (mm) 159.46 x 73.27 x 7.36
Weight (g) 171.00
Battery capacity (mAh) 4300
Removable battery No
Fast charging Proprietary
Colours Stardust Black, Sunshine Gold
Display
Screen size (inches) 6.56
Touchscreen Yes
Resolution 1,080×2,376 pixels
Hardware
Processor make MediaTek Dimensity 1200
RAM 8GB
Internal storage 128GB
Camera
Rear camera 108-megapixel (f/1.88) + 8-megapixel (f/2.2) + 2-megapixel (f/2.4)
Rear autofocus Yes
Rear flash Yes
Front camera 50-megapixel (f/2.0) + 8-megapixel (f/2.28)
No. of Front Cameras 2
Software
Operating system Android 12
Skin Funtouch OS 12
Connectivity
Wi-Fi Yes
GPS Yes
Bluetooth Yes, v 5.20
USB OTG Yes
USB Type-C Yes
Headphones 3.5mm
Number of SIMs 2
SIM 1
SIM Type Nano-SIM
GSM/CDMA GSM
3G Yes
4G/ LTE Yes
5G Yes
Supports 4G in India (Band 40) Yes
SIM 2
SIM Type Nano-SIM
GSM/CDMA GSM
3G Yes
4G/ LTE Yes
Supports 4G in India (Band 40) Yes
Sensors
In-Display Fingerprint Sensor Yes
Proximity sensor Yes
Accelerometer Yes
Ambient light sensor Yes
Gyroscope Yes

BOX CONTENTS

  • Vivo V23 Pro Handset
  • Vivo FlashCharger Brick
  • Protective Case
  • Type-C Data Cable
  • SIM Ejector Tool
  • Earphone Jack Adapter
  • Quick Start Guide & Warranty Card

DESIGN & DISPLAY

Vivo V23 Pro sits at the top of the premium range in the Vivo V series and offers some major differences to hit the sweet spot of the consumers. The Vivo V23 still shares the same design ethos; the fluorite Anti-Glare glass ensures that the device doesn’t catch smudges and fingerprint traces with ease which doesn’t disturb the aesthetics on the back. This curved back panel aids in gripping the device easily.

The center of attraction here is that Vivo introduced it as India’s first Colour Changing Fluorite glass which shifts its colours. As soon as sunlight (or artificial UV light) strikes the panel, it turns its colour into Turquoise Blue within a second and it takes almost 5 minutes to turn it back to an elegant Gold colour during the indoor scenarios. Vivo V23 Pro is available in 2 colours:- Sunshine Gold and Stardust Black. However, we’re conducting this review with Sunshine Gold, and boy! It’s a head-turner.

With a weight of around 171 grams and a thickness of 7.36mm, which refers to that this device is slimmer and lightweight than its previous iteration. This Ultra-Slim form factor is further complemented by a 5.7-inch 3D curved display which also counts in as India’s slimmest curved display 5G smartphone launched yet. It doesn’t feel chunky and bulky during single-hand operations. The frame is made of aluminum which is quite evident to trim down the weight which feels sturdy.

Delivering the physical overview, On the right, it flanks a power button and volume rockers which are pretty tactile and easily reachable through the thumb whereas on the left it’s a clean sweep. On the top, it bundles a secondary microphone and ‘PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY’ engraved in a silver tone. On the bottom, there’s a standard USB Type-C port with a mono speaker to its right and a SIM tray slot, and a primary microphone to its left. Sad to say, but there’s no headphone jack present in this device. This single bottom-firing speaker is loud enough but lacks bass. The lack of a dual speaker setup in a premium phone such as this is disappointing.

As you fire up the display, it sports a 6.56-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a 90Hz of refresh rate. The 90Hz refresh rate feels not enough while paying such a premium price tag. If you’re someone who’s coming from a 120Hz display panel, they’ll notice the difference while using this. If you’re upgrading from a 60hz display panel, it’s not a sacrifice. With a resolution of 2376x1080p and HDR10 certification, it ensures to fulfill most of your binge sessions. There’s an in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and unlocks the device rapidly. This display is protected with Schott Xensation UP and the protection for the back isn’t mentioned yet.

The bathtub notch is back which was removed in Vivo V21, but it’s a functional notch that holds Dual selfie cameras which we’ll elaborate on further in this review. With a peak brightness of up to 1300 nits, this display panel is bright enough for any lighting conditions. It comes with three display colour profiles:- Standard(Default), Professional and Bright. The default colour calibration is set towards reproducing little desaturated colours under the standard(default) mode. Whereas switching it towards ‘Bright” mode fixes that and we’ll recommend switching to Bright mode.

PERFORMANCE

The Vivo V23 Pro is powered by a Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset, a pro option for a device that is branded as one. It’s the first time for Vivo to come up with this flagship-grade processor for its V-series. However, there are contenders available at this price that offers better performance with Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, Performance is rather good with the device. This chipset can suffice day-to-day multitasking and playing graphics-intensive gaming with bliss. We played several game titles like Asphalt 9, BGMI, Call of Duty, Traffic Rider; we didn’t encounter any lags and freezes throughout the gameplay.

It is coupled with two storage configurations:- 8GB RAM+128GB storage and 12GB RAM+256GB storage. The RAM type is LPDD4X and the storage type is UFS 3.1. This chipset is based on 6nm architecture which offers a clock speed of up to 3.0Ghz with the futureproofing of 5G connectivity. With Extended RAM 2.0, you can add on 4GB RAM by partitioning your storage which helps to run more applications in the background. It supports 7 5G Bands which include N1, N3, N5, N8, N41, N77, N78. The graphical duties are further accompanied by Mali G77 GPU.

While playing games like BGMI on HDR graphics with Ultra frame rate and Call of Duty on High graphics and lag frame rate enabled, it plays them adequately without encountering lags and freezes. After a couple of rounds playing games, it felt slightly heated up around the camera which isn’t concerning. As far as benchmarks are concerned; In Antutu Benchmark, it scored 695569. Moving towards Geekbench 5, it scored 850 in Single-Core and 2980 in Multi-Score. It also has the support for Widevine L1 which makes it eligible to stream HD content on various OTT platforms. In the CPU Throttling Test, the CPU throttled to 76% to its max performance.

CAMERA

Vivo V series is especially recognized for its front camera capabilities more than the rear camera setup as we’d witnessed in our previous review of Vivo V20 Pro and Vivo V21. Vivo advertises it as India’s first 50MP Eye Autofocus Selfie Camera. On the rear, it flanks a triple camera setup:- 108MP Primary Camera with an aperture of f/1.88, an 8MP Ultra-wide angle lens with a 125-degree field of view and an aperture of f/2.2 and a 2MP Super Macro Lens (that’s what they called it) with an aperture of f/2.4 and a fixed focus of up to 4cms.

Images captured from the primary camera captures natural photos which emit flat colours with a bright exposure and hold sharp details in the scenario. If you used to adore the colour science of Vivo devices, this follows an exact opposite colour science from the rear. Moving towards low-light photos, the pictures come out bright but the lack of details and grains are quite evident which shouldn’t be the case with such a premium device.

The Ultrawide lens captures a nice amount of details until and unless there’s enough light in the scene. While switching to an ultra-wide camera, there’s a noticeable exposure and colour difference when compared with the primary sensor. Hence, we’ll not recommend using an Ultra-wide lens unless and until it’s not required to capture the larger depth of field.

Talking about the 2MP macro lens, it captures images with poor edge detection and with a lack of details. It’s better to capture photos with its primary camera sensor and later crop them while editing the image to get better results than this.

On to the front, it holds a dual selfie camera which includes a 50MP Primary Selfie Shooter with an aperture of f/2.0 and an 8MP Super Ultra-wide angle lens with an aperture of f/2.28. There’s no doubt Vivo V23 Pro selfie camera performance is impressive in this price tier. It follows the same neutral tones like the rear and preserves face details where the skin looks close to reality and on point. The edge detection works pretty well. With an 8MP Ultra-wide lens in the front, there’s no inconsistent colour science between the two cameras which is impressive. It captures a larger field of view and the results are not at all disappointing in this case. 

In low light scenarios, the two LED flash flanked at the top just bumps the selfie results to another level. The Spotlight feature helps to lighten up the face in dark scenarios and there’s an option to adjust the hue from Cool White to Warm Yellow. Moving towards video capabilities, it goes up to 4K 60fps from the front camera and there are features like Steadicam for better stabilization and Night Mode for brighter video results in low light which is just restricted to 1080p 30fps. 

About the rear, you can shoot all the way to 4K 60fps here too. The Standard stabilization is limited to 4K 30fps and the Ultra stabilization is limited to 1080p 60fps and does note that motion autofocus doesn’t work while using stabilization modes. The motion autofocus is limited to 1080p 30fps on the rear.

SOFTWARE & BATTERY

During our review period, we received an OTA update on January 3 which improved system operation performance and stability. Vivo V23 Pro runs on Funtouch OS 12 which is running on the latest Android 12. This new OTA update revokes the Netflix support which Vivo will address in future updates. As of now, if you try to open Netflix it will redirect you to Playstore which indicates that this app isn’t compatible with your device. 

This software stack feels like Stock Android with a smoother navigation experience and more fluid animations along with some customizations like Always-On-Display, Custom Animations for Fingerprint, Facial Recognition, Charging and Screen On/Off, Ultra Game Mode, Smart Split, and Smart Motion, Face Beauty for Video Calls, etc. Earlier, we reported that there’s no way to remove Hot Apps and Hot Games from the device but now you can turn them off by visiting home settings which scream that they are improving it with its every iteration. Still, there is bloatware that can be uninstalled and unnecessary Vivo Apps continue to consume the space.

A 4,300mAh battery is pretty standard for this category and Vivo V23 Pro delivers all-day battery life on moderate usage. It offers a battery backup of about 6-7 hours which includes playing games, Browsing the internet and social media apps, Fair camera usage with moderate Netflix sessions when the refresh rates were set to 90Hz. For juicing the battery, it supports 44 Watt of Fast Charging where the device can reach from 0%-100% in 59 minutes which is impressive. If you’re in a hurry, this charger can juice up the battery from 0%-63% in 30 minutes. There’s no wireless charging support but that’s still a feature that’s less common for this price tier.

Vivo V23 Pro – The Unbiased Verdict

The Vivo V23 Pro is available in two colours:- Sunshine Gold and Stardust Black which is priced at Rs.38,990 for 8GB+128GB and Rs.43,990 for 12GB+256GB and available at Vivo Official Website and Flipkart.

Vivo V23 Pro turns its charm on with its colour-changing glass panel, a slim and lightweight form factor, an impressive selfie camera combined with a middle-of-the-road rear camera setup. The performance isn’t the best in class but the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 is all right for daily use. The bathtub notch can irk some users and the single stereo speaker lacks bass and isn’t the best for listening to music. If you’re someone whose key priority is to grab a lightweight, slim and gorgeous-looking smartphone with a tempting selfie camera and other aspects like a weak primary camera setup, lack of stereo speaker, a not-so-flagship processor doesn’t haunt you off; Choosing the Vivo V23 Pro will be a nice decision. 

There are other rivalries that offer Mediatek Dimensity 1200 at a slightly cheaper price tier i.e, the OnePlus Nord 2 and Poco F3 GT. If you’re someone who’s looking for sheer performance then Realme GT won’t disappoint you with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, a worthy camera setup, and fast charging. Another is the OnePlus 9R which bundles a premium design and a disappointing camera setup. The Motorola Edge 20 Pro is also a strong contender which brings a clean OS experience and a fluid 144Hz display and performance to boast of. Other alternatives at this price range are Mi 11x Pro 5G which offers a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor and a 120Hz display, iQoo 7 Legend for its impressive camera setup, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor to power it.

Disclaimer: We tested the Vivo V23 Pro (8GB+128GB)  for 2 weeks before writing this review. All our reviews are unbiased and are published without the brand getting to read it before you guys. We don’t change our reviews on pressure from brands and that’s the reason we are not sent review units from companies like Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and a few more.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Such cool shots! The camera of this smartphone is really cool, the 108-mp is actually apt. Love the mediatek processor and battery.

  2. I am impressed by the fact that Vivo has used various cool and amazing features including the mediatek chipset, 108-mp camera, color-changing back, etc.

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