Vivo is on a roll in India. After launching game-centric Vivo Z1 Pro at starting price of Rs. 15K, Vivo has brought Vivo S1 with stylish look to lure younger people to flaunt it! Whether this phone is able to attract the targetted audience with its look as well as performance? I have been using this phone for quite sometime and below is my analysis of S1:
The front of S1 looks like any small notched display phone. It has narrow bezels on all the four corners having 90% screen to body ratio and which result in wider display for enjoying media content and gaming. The moment you turn this phone, you will realize that back of S1 has gradient design. Despite the fact that body is made of good quality polycarboante but glass like curved back cover enhances its look quotient. Moreover, Skyline Blue colored handset which we received for review is unique color and reflects different color hues when seen from different angles. It is not an ordinay color as conventional blue color would look boring in front of Skyline blue which has bluish-white and purple tone. This phone also comes in Diamond black color. The S1 has vertically stacked triple camera module on the left side of the device with slight bulge and at the bottom left Vivo branding is given. Power button and volume rocker is placed on the right side which can be easily reached and provide tactile response. On the left, you will find SIM slot which can accomodate two Nano SIMs and dedicated slot is given for microSD card. Plus dedicated button is also given on the left side for Google Assistant. On the bottom of the device is given the Micro-USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and speaker.
The Vivo S1 has a 6.39 inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display (2340 × 1080 pixels, 404PPi) with a waterdrop notch. The display has an aspect ratio of 19:5:9 and 90% screen to body ratio gives enough space for watching media content and playing games. The display has very good viewing angles and sunlight visibilty is also good. In-display fingerprint sensor also works smoothly and unlocks the phone in split second. It never failed to respond and that is great plus point. Besides this, face unlock feature also works wonderfully and unlocks the phone very quickly.
This phone is powered by Octa Core MediaTek Helio P65 (MT6768) 12nm processor with ARM Mali-G52 GPU and comes with three differnt configurations of RAM and internal storage such as 4GB RAM+128GB ROM, 6GB RAM+64GB ROM and 6GB RAM+128GB ROM. Internal storage can be further extended upto 256 GB via dedicated microSD card. We got 6GB RAM variant and the phone sent to us worked perfectly fine. Loading of apps is fast and switching between the apps also work smoothly. Day to day operations like opening multiple websites, email accounts and social channels can be done without any problem. You can play all the games including heavy graphics games like PUBG on this and to make the experience more comfortable, it has Ultra Game Mode. But there can be little bit of lag when you play PUBG continuosly say for one hour and little bit of heating issue but this is not cause of concern as normally we, seldom play games for such a long time. Call quality on this phone is good and speaker at the bottom produce good sound.
This phone is packed with 4500mAh battery with 18W Dual-engine fast charger which comes in the box. Even if you are heavy users of the phone, still the battery will last for more than one day. I have tested this phone by using it continuously for six hours with multiple functions and was impressed that after charging for full, it lasted for more than 10 hours. Zero to full charge take approximately one hour and fifty minutes which is also not bad.
For imaging, this phone is armed with three cameras of 16MP primary sensor (Sony IMX499) with f/1.78 lens, secondary sensor of 8MP with f/2.2 wide-angle lens and a 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 lens. This set-up of cameras boast of various features such as HDR Mode, PDAF, Pro Mode, AR Stickers, AI Face Beauty, Time-Lapse and Slow-Mo, AI Super-wide Angle for videos etc. The camera of this phone produces detailed shots in good light but struggles in dim light. I was quite impressed with ultra wide angle lens which take pefect long shots with clarity. Similarly you can also capture good images with Bokeh effect and to justify my claim, I am reproducing below few images in normal mode, wide mode and Bokeh mode:
For selfie enthusiasts, this phone has 32MP front camera with f/2.0 aperture with features of HDR, Panorama, Gender detection, Face Beauty+ Bokeh, AR Stickers, Selfie Lighting and AI Face Beauty. You can capture pleasing selfies on this phone for creating buzz on your social media platofrms.
This phone runs on Android 9.0 Pie with layer of Funtouch OS 9. The UI is not complicated and can be used easily. Only issue is it comes loaded with various apps and saving grace is that they can be easily deleted for making the phone more smooth to operate.
Verdict
This phone is priced Rs. 17,990 for 4GB RAM and Rs. 18990 for 6GB+64GB ROM and Rs. 19,990 for 6GB RAM+128GB ROM which we have reviewed. At this price, it is good value for money if you want to have a phone which is not run of the mill as far as its look is concerned. This phone can be considered also for its vibrant display, long-lasting battery and for its optics. In my opinion, the S1 has in-house competition from Vivo Z1 Pro which was launched in the month of July which has 6.53 inch Full HD+ LCD screen, identical cameras, huge 5000mAh battery and packed with Snapdragon 712 processor. Ironically, the Z1 Pro starts at Rs. 14,990 which also has good design and comes with punch-hole display.
