Chinese smartphone brand, Vivo known for innovation and camera-centric smartphones has tasted huge suceess with its smartphones in India. This is the company which has introduced in-display fingerprint sensor, pop-up front camera, which is becoming a norm now. To take this legacy of one-upmanship forward, Vivo has launched Vivo Z1 Pro in India which is the first phone to be packed with Snapdragon 712 and is an ideal solution for playing heavy graphics game like PUBG without any hindrance by not spending fortunes on it. This phone is mid-segmented and will give very tough competition to the phones in crowded space. This is the phone targetted for youngsters and ticks all the corners as observed by me during my use of this device. Starting at price of Rs. 14,990 this phone deserves your serious attention incase you are looking at new phone. What is the reason for this conviction? Please read below:
Let us start with the design. This is not ordinary looking phone. It has huge display of 6.53 inch and single hand navigation is little bit difficult unless you are used to massive displays! On the front, you get more real estate as the front camera is under-display or can be called punch-hole camera, on the left side on top and display has very thin bezels. Thankfully, this phone does not have any notch as majority of us are fed-up with notch designs. The earpiece is placed on the top of the display. When you turn to the back of the phone, your first impressions will start with Wow on your mouth! The back of the phone has reflective, shiny back with color gradient which flows across every inch of the back cover and gives it an awesome look. Moreover, the 3D curved body gives firm grip on the phone. This phone comes in three colors – Sonic Blue, Sonic Black and Mirror Black. I have the opportunity to get Sonic Blue color which at the moment is a craze among the youngsters and looks quite glamorous.
This phone is armed with three rear cameras in vertical shape with LED flash and fingerprint sensor near it. At the bottom of back cover, you will find Vivo branding. On the right side are given power button and volume rocker. On the left side, there is SIM slot for two 4G Volte SIMs and third slot is dedicated one for microSD card. On the left side, there is also Jovi Assistant button for launching Google virtual assistant and starting conversation with the assistant. On the bottom, you will find 3.5 mm audio jack, micro USB port and speaker grille.
The tagline of Vivo Z1 Pro is FullyLoaded and yes it is. It comes with 6.53 inch (2340 × 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 19.5:9 LCD screen, Octa Core Snapdragon 712 10nm processor with Adreno 616 GPU. It comes in three variants of 4GB LPPDDR4x RAM with 64GB storage priced at Rs. 14,990, 6GB LPPDDR4x RAM with 64GB storage for Rs. 17,990 and 6GB LPPDDR4x RAM with 128GB storage for Rs. 18,990. Internal storage of all the variants can be extended upto 256GB via microSD card. This phone gets its juice from massive 5000mAh battery. For imaging, three rear cameras of 16MP+8MP+2MP are fitted in the back and for selfie, it has 32MP punch-hole camera. By any standard, this is very impressive hardware keeping inview of the prices demanded by Vivo.
Display of Z1 Pro is very impressive and reproduces bright and vivid colors. Sunlight visibilty is excellent and viewing angles are superb. Whether you are consuming media content or playing games, you will have an immersive experience as you find lot of space on the display courtesy in-display front camera, no notch and very thin bezels. I can give 10 out of 10 for display of the phone.
On the performance front, Snapdragon 712 processor on this phone paired with 4GB/6GB RAM and Andreno 616 is very nice combination. You can perform any function on this chipset be it switching between the apps, switching sites on Chrome, browsing social media, streaming of content from different sources and watching them. 712 is so powerful that it fulfills all your requirements without any hiccup. Latest craze among youngsters is PUBG game and you can play it in high graphic settings without any stutters or lags. Icing on the cake is that this phone has feature of Game Cube which enhances the gaming experience by blocking background calls, notifications, rejecting calls during gaming, 4D Game Vibration, 3D surround effect and turning on Esports Mode. Another plus point is that this phone does not heat up and no frame drop was noticed even after long duration of playing PUBG or any other heavy games. This is the result of Vivo Multi Turbo employed in the phone which helps in faster dissipiation of heat and acceleration and smooth operations of gaming.
This phone is packed with massive 5000mAh battery with 18W fast charging. Even after heavy usage by playing PUBG, streaming content and watching movies, listening to music, browsing social media, news sites and my two email accounts quite frequently, the battery has lasted for more than one day. You can recharge the battery with inbox 18W adapter in approximately two hours from zero to full.
Vivo has always provided phones with good cameras and this legacy is taken one step further in Z1 Pro. The punch-hole front shooter has 32MP with f/2.0 aperture with various features of AI Beauty and AR Stickers to name a few. It reproduces very good selfies in daylight as you can see below:
In the rear, this phone is armed with triple cameras of 16MP with f/1.78 aperture, 8 MP120° wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture, 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture and LED flash. The rear camera set-up comes with various modes such as Panorama, Pro, Wide, Night and Fun Video to name a few. Dylight photography is excellent as it produces sharp results whereas the image captured in night is mediocre. Some of the sample images taken on this phone with normal mode and wide anle mode are reproduced below:
The Z1 Pro runs on Funtouch OS based on Android 9 Pie which is inspired by Apple’s iOS. This is UI has been improved a llt by Vivo for better experience but those who like Stock Android UI may feel little bit awkward with this UI as it has many bloatwares which thankfully can be uninstalled. One of the positives of refinement of this UI is its Dark Mode feature that turns almost all the popular apps dark. With Jovi Assistant buttton, you can launch Google Assistant for various information such as movies and restaurants nearby, traffic information to name a few.
For security this phone has fingerprit sensor on the back which works smoothly and face unlock feature which also worked flawlessly during my usage.
To sum up, Vivo Z1 Pro has all the qualities which a good phone should have. Its display is perfect, Snapdragon 712 processor which is claimed to be 10 percent faster than Snapdragon 710 and 25 percent faster than 660, performs all functions smoothly including gaming. Its battery of 5000mAh is workhorse and its triple rear camera set-up is an ideal combination of good photography in all environments. Its design and front in-display camera for selfie lovers will also be one of the reasons to lay your hands on it. Only small concern for this phone is that its back is prone to smudges and to cover this, consumers should use the protective cover which comes in the box. The phone is quite heavy as it has weight of 202g and singel hand naviagtion is little bit difficult. But still, this is the phone you can consider if your budget is below 20K as it ticks all the corners very nicely. This phone has thrown tough challenge to Redmi Note 7 Pro and Realme 3 Pro.
