The Vivo V15 arrived in Malaysia alongside its upgraded counterpart, V15 Pro, last month and we are lucky to be able to get the phone on our hands and try it out. Here’s our Vivo V15 review.

Design and display

The Vivo V15 is honestly very well-designed and in case you didn’t know, it comes in two colours – Topaz Blue and Glamour Red. We got the latter and it looks pretty damn good with a mixture of black and the original colour from top to bottom on its back.

Weighting at 189.5g, the Vivo V15 is considered quite light, at least for me, and I had no struggles at all bringing it around with me. Its dimensions come in 161.2, 75.9 and 8.5mm for height, width and depth respectively which is, I would consider, the standard size required of an above-average smartphone these days.

With its size measuring at 6.53 inches, what’s actually more impressive is its huge 90.95% screen-to-body ratio thanks to the Ultra FullView Display by taking advantage of the absence of a front camera or should I say, change of position? I’ll get into the front camera shortly, by the way. Well, bigger screen always makes it easier for gaming, am I right?

The screen is an IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen that’s capable of a resolution up to 1080 x 2340 pixels, with 16M colours. Also, the Corning Gorilla Glass 5 makes sure that the Vivo V15 does not come with a fragile screen and it even helps with the viewing experience.

Camera

Everyone who’s already got the Vivo V15 should be appreciative of the uniquely-designed pop-up front camera that’s set to catch even more eyes of incoming consumers. Whenever the front camera is needed, it will pop up from within the top right corner of the phone and there you have it, the powerful 32MP front camera that’s equipped with features such as the AI Face Beauty. If you love selfies, the Vivo V15 is definitely meant for you. Fancy stuff indeed.

Although it’s not as fancy as the pop-up front camera, the back camera is also somewhat impressive, not to mention that it’s quite nicely designed as well, at the top left corner on the back. The AI Triple Camera comes with 12 (24 million photosensitive units), 8 and 5 MP lens, with the addition of various features such as Dual Pixel Focusing.

I’ve tried out the camera and I’ve got to say, it’s quite powerful. The camera focuses well on the objects you want easily and can even manage to capture slow moving objects expertly, thus producing crystal-clear images. It even allows you to capture a full screen image, filling out the entirety of the screen, a feature which some other older phones do not possess.

Furthermore, there’s the 8MP AI Super-Wide Angle Camera that expands your view to an amazing 120 degrees, squeezing in everything you need and everyone you want in a huge group photo. However, it’s quite blurry but overall, the camera is already good enough by today’s standards.

Overall performance

Needless to say and I’ll keep it short, the Vivo V15 is extremely smooth when it comes to its overall performance. No surprise there as it’s running on a powerful 2.1GHz octa-core MTK P70 processor and 6GB RAM, with Funtouch OS 9.0 based on the latest Android 9.0 which allow multiple apps to run at the same time without any problems.

Gaming performance

The Vivo V15 possesses unreal gaming capabilities and I’m not going to lie, I really enjoyed playing PUBG Mobile on it. Despite setting the game on HD graphics, there was very minimal FPS drops and no lagging at all which is really no surprise as it’s built for ultra-smooth gaming thanks to its powerful specs and the Game Mode 5.0 feature which is sort of like a game assistant but better.

The Game Mode 5.0 basically enables the phone’s system to prioritize gaming at all times, allowing you to play like an e-sports pro with features that block calls and notifications. The Vivo V15 is sure to provide you with a decent mobile gaming experience.

If you are wondering why it’s always capable of maintaining such a good frame rate, it’s thanks to the Dual-Turbo that ensures speed and smoothness when gaming. Not to mention that it reduces frame rate drop by an insane 300%! If you are looking for a cheaper option that’s capable of bringing your mobile gaming experience to the next level, the Vivo V15 is surely the one you should be looking at.

Battery performance

I’ll keep this short too as Vivo V15‘s battery performance is yet another aspect of the phone which I’m very impressed with. A massive 4,000mAh battery and Vivo’s Dual-Engine Fast Charging, the Vivo V15 is literally perfect for those who are looking for an extremely sustainable phone when it comes to battery.

On top of that, it’s equipped with nine different safety technologies that are meant not just to protect the battery but also to guarantee safety during the charging process. As for my own experience, I was playing PUBG Mobile with it on HD graphics for an hour and the battery percentage went down like only 10% during that period. That says it all, really. Plus, the phone won’t overheat easily which is good for any hardcore mobile gamers.

Verdict

Overall a great phone to have that comes with two nice colours and it’s suitable for any casual mobile photographers and hardcore mobile gamers. The Vivo V15 is currently priced at RM1399 which is fairly quite cheap for a phone with such specs so if you’re planning on getting an above-average phone under a tight budget, I’d suggest to go for the Vivo V15.

For more information, you can visit Vivo’s official website.