The year 2018 marked a huge step in VIVO’s direction as they released their new flagship the VIVO V9 smartphone. This is also the year that smartphone’s bezels have significantly shrunk, not only this phone, but other phones as well. VIVO’s introduction of their smartphone this year is not much of a surprise since they did it last year. What is more interesting about this year’s release is the focus on bezel size.
VIVO V9 Design and Construction:
Every year, VIVO makes significant design changes to their smartphones. This year, the VIVO V9 got quite a cosmetic makeover. At 6.3 inches, the VIVO V9 bezel-less dsiplay at 85.2% screen-to-body ratio.
With the VIVO V9, you get the same premium metallic build and flawless craftsmanship from VIVO. It feels good on the hands, very light for its size and a slim profile.
Even though it’s thicker than X20 series. At 7.9mm, the VIVO V9 still a slim profile smartphone with slim side edges. It has the same feeling when you hold the VIVO X20 smartphone. We cannot deny that the design of the VIVO V9 was heavily inspired by the Iphone X. The fingerprint sensor is mounted at back (to be easily reachable by the right or left index finger) and the volume controls along with the lock button on the right side.
VIVO V9 Display:
The top notch is the most obvious part of the display which is borrowed from Apple. The notch on Vivo V9 is much shorter and has the front camera sensor and speaker.
Vivo V9 has impressive display performance with 19:9 aspect ratio. The star of the show here as it is one of the better screens you can find today. Watching videos is also nice, while images appear sharp and clear. The brightness levels are satisfactory, it will surely shine indoor or outdoor.
OS, UI and Apps:
The Vivo V9’s performance may pass the standards for most users for all the routine tasks they entrust their phones with. It runs the latest Android Oreo 8.1 with a lot of bloated apps from VIVO. The unfortunate thing here is that you can’t delete them. For Android users, overall UI will be easy to get accustomed to.
Just like in my iPhone, the Vivo V9 has easy access task menu. For example, swiping up from bottom you get options to increase the volume, brightness or turning on Wi-Fi and Cellular Data. Multi-tasking is also nice and smooth.
Camera:
Vivo V9 has 16 MP camera and 5 MP camera sensor with dual led-flash for sensing the depth in a vertical arrangement which is similar to the camera setup of the iPhone X. Here’s a sample photo taken with low light background. (Flash on)
The highlight feature of the device is its 24 MP selfie camera for improved selfies. They claimed that the device uses AI to automatically detect the gender, age, skin tone, texture and the lighting condition of the environment to adjust the settings of the camera, making for better-looking selfies.
The camera software has number of modes including “Bokeh”, “Professional”, ‘Panorama’, Face Beauty’, “Take Photo”, “Videos”, and “AR stickers” mode. The front camera has 4K video resolution capability.
VIVO V9 Performance & Benchmarks:
Expect android phones have multi-core processors and huge amounts of RAM. VIVO V9 gets a modest Octa-core 2.2 GHz and 4GB of RAM. Of course, more RAM is better but Android 8.1 works just fine on this smartphone. Here’s the Antutu Bechmark score for VIVO V9:
VIVO V9 Call Quality and Battery:
Call quality on the VIVO V9 is very good with clear and crisp audio when making voice calls. Battery is standard for VIVO V9 with Li-Ion 3260 mAh. The batter can last up to 2 days on standby mode and 12 hrs with minimal call, text and internet browsing. It’s a great score compared to other flagship handsets but once we use the device on heavy gaming, we only managed to get about 3 hours with Wi-Fi turned on. Charging the phone from 10% to full took me 2 hours, which is nice!
What I liked about the VIVO V9:
- Nice build and construction
- Impressive display quality
- Very good camera performance
- Good design
- Fingerprint sensor mounted at the back
- OTG Ready
- Expandable storage
What I did not like:
- Bloated apps
- Rip-off display design from iPhone X.
- Performance to price ratio is expensive for mid range smartphone. You can buy faster phones for same price range.
VIVO V9 specs:
| NETWORK | Technology | GSM / HSPA / LTE |
| LAUNCH | Announced | 2018, March |
| Status | Available. Released 2018, April | |
| BODY | Dimensions | 154.8 x 75.1 x 7.9 mm (6.09 x 2.96 x 0.31 in) |
| Weight | 150 g (5.29 oz) | |
| Build | Front glass, aluminum body | |
| SIM | Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) | |
| DISPLAY | Type | IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
| Size | 6.3 inches, 99.1 cm2 (~85.2% screen-to-body ratio) | |
| Resolution | 1080 x 2280 pixels (~400 ppi density) | |
| Multitouch | Yes | |
| – Funtouch OS 4.0 | ||
| PLATFORM | OS | Android 8.1 (Oreo) |
| Chipset | Qualcomm MSM8953-Pro Snapdragon 626 | |
| CPU | Octa-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A53 | |
| GPU | Adreno 506 | |
| MEMORY | Card slot | microSD, up to 256 GB (dedicated slot) |
| Internal | 64 GB, 4 GB RAM | |
| CAMERA | Primary | Dual: 16 MP + 5 MP, f/2.0, phase detection autofocus, dual-LED flash |
| Features | Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, panorama | |
| Video | 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30fps | |
| Secondary | 24 MP, f/2.0, 1080p | |
| SOUND | Alert types | Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones |
| Loudspeaker | Yes | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes | |
| – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic | ||
| COMMS | WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, hotspot |
| Bluetooth | 4.2, A2DP, LE | |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS | |
| Radio | FM radio, recording | |
| USB | microUSB 2.0, USB On-The-Go | |
| FEATURES | Sensors | Fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass |
| Messaging | SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email | |
| Browser | HTML5 | |
| – MP4/H.264 player | ||
| – MP3/WAV/eAAC+/FLAC player | ||
| – Document viewer | ||
| – Photo/video editor | ||
| BATTERY | Non-removable Li-Ion 3260 mAh battery | |
| MISC | Colors | Gold, Black |
| Price | ₱17,999 |
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