This Vivo smartphone offers the privacy features of Android 12. Small audio and video indicators appear in the notification area when the phone’s microphone or camera is in use. Apart from all this, it also includes some Funtouch widgets inspired by Origin OS. The notification tray and quick settings menu do not look like the Google Pixel running on stock Android. The powerful search function is not available in the app drawer, but the notification history makes up for it and you can use it by scrolling the notification tray to the bottom (you have to activate it first by going to the settings).
The company has added a new Game Space app to the phone, but it is of no use and only tells you which games are present in your phone and for how long you have played them.
Vivo V23 Pro performed as expected in standard benchmark tests. It scored 950 and 3,216 respectively in Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests. At the same time, it scored 6,24,567 points in AnTuTu. This score is obviously equal to the score of a mid-range smartphone and in the same price range.
This is less than the score of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC processor found in .
Gaming performance was good. The phone did get heated up when I played games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends on the highest settings. However, it handled long gaming sessions well without any impact on performance. Asphalt 9: Legends ran smoothly on 60fps mode, but Call of Duty was not as much fun as the touch sensitivity was not able to support me in moving quickly and killing enemies while gaming. I lost many tournaments due to this slight delay in touch response. Even after lowering the graphics quality to the lowest level, the phone did not lag.
Vivo V23 Pro has a single speaker, which sounds quite loud, but the sound feels distorted at high volumes. Phones in this price range often have stereo sound, which is missing in this phone. The phone should have had a stereo speaker setup to balance the sound.
The phone’s AMOLED panel is good. It’s bright enough, and the colours are saturated, but colours do appear a little faded when viewed in direct sunlight. The 90Hz refresh rate is adequate, but many of this phone’s competitors have higher refresh rates. What makes the panel special are its curved edges. They don’t look very different in everyday use, but the phone’s medium-sized notch looks a little different, as most Android phones these days (in both its price range and below it) have hole-punch cutouts, which take up less space and give the display a clean look.
Despite being slim, the battery life of the phone is quite impressive and the phone gives a decent battery backup. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted for 12 hours and 7 minutes, which is slightly below average. In normal use, the phone lasts a full day on a single charge, but it cannot be called the best in this segment. Users who want more battery power will have to look for some other option. The phone charges quickly with a 44W fast charger. It charges up to 65 percent in 30 minutes and gets fully charged in an hour.
Vivo V23 Pro cameras
The camera specifications of the Vivo V23 Pro are quite attractive. Both the front and rear cameras can do 4K recording at 60fps. The front camera also has HDR video recording and has two LED flash units. The phone has a total of three rear cameras and two front cameras. Its primary camera at the rear is 108 megapixels, the second camera is an 8-megapixel ultra wide angle lens and the third lens is a 2-megapixel macro shooter.
The primary camera in the front facing camera is 50 megapixels, which comes with autofocus. The second camera is an 8 megapixel ultra wide angle lens, which makes it easy to take group selfies. The camera interface is well set up and all the necessary settings can be accessed quickly. For this, a menu has been provided in the top left corner (when holding the phone lengthwise), in which the settings can be easily changed. It is worth noting here that special video features like Steadiface and Super Night can only record 1080p at 30fps. HDR video is also limited to 30fps for 1080p and 4K. While 1080p recording is limited to 60fps in Super Stabilization mode.
Photos taken with the 108MP camera were saved in 12MP. Photos taken in daylight showed high saturation, but dynamic range and details were good. Photos taken with the ultra wide angle camera were below average in terms of details. Only photos taken in daylight were usable.
The 50-megapixel selfie camera also saved photos in 12 megapixels. Selfies taken in daylight were quite sharp and clear and had good dynamic range. It also separated the background from the subject well. Edge detection and details were very good in portrait mode. The same was seen in the portrait mode of the rear camera. Photos taken by the ultra wide selfie camera were also excellent and much better than the rear facing ultra wide camera. The 2-megapixel macro camera was quite useful in taking close-up shots, but the quality was average.
In low light, the primary rear camera took good shots with good details and dynamic range. Night mode shots were also good. Subjects looked sharp, but the photos in contrast mode looked slightly artificial. There were some photos in which I noticed that the highlights around street lamps or other sources of light were overexposed. Photos taken with the ultra wide angle camera in night mode looked good on the phone’s display, but there was not much detail on the monitor screen.
Selfies taken in low light were sharp and details came out better with the spotlight flash than with the screen flash. However, the quality of photos taken with both methods is not above average. Night mode also did not help. In most cases, the primary selfie camera struggled to focus even after turning on the flash.
Talking about the video, there was some disappointment here too. The company has paid a lot of attention to the extra features but left the basic features behind. The best quality of the video in the phone was found in shooting 4K videos at 30fps. Details were not found in 1080p video recording in daylight. Stabilization was very good at 1080p but was nowhere to be seen while recording 4K videos at 60fps.
The phone has an ultra stabilization mode that stabilizes the video completely, but its resolution is limited to 1080p at 60fps. When shooting selfie videos in daylight at any resolution, the background was overexposed. In HDR mode, the subject and background came out well, but the exposure was high and details were below average. Vivo has provided a stabilization feature called Steadiface, which makes the footage look smooth even in daylight and low light.
When videos were shot in low light with the selfie camera, the footage was quite grainy. The Super Night video mode helped reduce this to a great extent, but the frame rate went haywire. Details were not found when videos were shot in 1080p. Videos shot at 60fps were recorded quite dark and the stabilization was also not very good. There was a slight decrease in video smoothness while walking. Even when the resolution was increased to 4K, there was a problem with the stability of the video. The footage at 60fps in 4K was quite dark and the videos were shaking even when panning. In Ultra Stabilization mode, the videos appeared slightly blurred and faded.
Verdict
This phone is for those users who want a thin and light smartphone, or want to experience the latest Android smartphone. Its color changing panel is quite different. This phone is one of the few smartphones available in this segment that has a curved edge display. However, for users who want gaming performance and excellent battery life, this phone does not meet the criteria.
The competition for Vivo V23 Pro is very tough. After testing Realme GT and iQoo 7 Legend in the review, I can say with full confidence that iQoo has the best camera among all of them. Apart from this, many other smartphones, such as OnePlus 9R, Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro and recently launched Xiaomi 11T Pro There are two phones available in the market, which offer better gaming performance than the Vivo V23 Pro. All these phones have stereo speakers and AMOLED display, which includes a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Mi 11X Pro also gets IP53 rating.
Photos taken with the camera of Vivo V23 Pro are quite impressive, but video recording needs a lot of improvement. This smartphone proves to be better than V20 Pro in many ways, but cannot be called perfect. Its higher price makes the competition even tougher for it, as it also has to compete with premium smartphones in this range, which perform better than it.