Vivo as a smartphone brand has risen to great heights out of almost nowhere, especially in India. The smartphone company which is one of the leaders in the product segment worldwide, recently sponsored IPL, earning itself a great brand recall, and of course driving enormous sales. So while the phones from this Chinese maker are slightly more expensive than its other compatriots, it has managed to carve a bit more premium positioning for itself. The V3 Max that we’re reviewing in this piece is a phablet with mid-high specs and features and a retail price of 23,980. It’s a ‘maxed out’ version of its relatively economical V3 sibling. Here’s our review.
Design and build
The Vivo V3 Max gets a 5.5 inch screen and a weight of 168g, which makes is a rather large-ish and slightly heavy phone though it still looks sleek and feels rather slim to the hand. The body is all metal with a pale golden satin finish with shiny highlights at the back and on the sides. That back panel really looks premium. The front panel is white, with a plasticky appearance, though we would have liked it to carry the premium metallic theme to the front section as well.
The back panel gets a fingerprint sensor, an LED flash and the lens for its 13mp camera along with longitudinal VIVO branding. The fingerprint sensor on the Vivo works pretty precisely and quickly. Able to store as many as five fingerprints, the scanner can be used to unlock the screen directly from the standby mode and can be used to lock the files of your choice.
At the bottom you see the charging port, speakers and mic along with the antennae in a white shade. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack on top with a couple of slim antenna elements. The right side gets the power and volume rocker buttons while the left side features the SIM tray which hosts twin Micro SIM slots including one hybrid slot for memory expansion. This means that you can either use twin micro SIMs or a SIM along with an external memory card. You can’t have twin SIMs and memory expansion here.
The front panel gets the usual suspects in a proximity sensor, a speaker and the front shooter along with capacitive Android keys at the bottom which aren’t backlit in this case. You also get Vivo branding on the left hand side above the screen panel, which is rather tastefully done.
Specs and features
The V3 Max gets a Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core 652 SoC (system on Chip). The SoC is clocked at 1.8GHz for four cores, with the rest of the four cores gets 1.4GHz clock speed. The device also gets 4GB of RAM which is above par for the segment and helps the V3 Max offer snappy performance. Overall, the Snapdragon 652 is just a notch below the flagship processors, but much superior to other middling processors chips and endows the V3 Max with blazing speed. The phone also gets 32GB of internal memory, expandable externally by up to 128 GB.
The V3 Max gets a full HD IPS LCD (1920x1080px) screen with 401PPI density. The screen is bright and sharp enough, and features good levels of contrast. Though definitely not the most vivid screen out there, the V3 Max screen delights with its natural colours and deep-enough blacks. There really isn’t anything to complain about that screen.
The battery on the phone is a decent sized 3000 mAh unit which lasted us easily for more than a day. Used conservatively the battery can even last two days on a new phone. The phone comes in-built with battery saving software which can be turned on to extend the battery life if required.
You get the phone, a cover, earphones, charger and OTG cable out of the box
Other important specs include Bluetooth 4.1 with A2DP, 4G compatibility for both SIMs and support for USB OTG with an adapter shipped free with the phone. The phone uses quick charging and can be recharged really quickly, which is a great feature to have.
On the software front, the V3 Max gets Android 5.1 with VIVO’s own FunTouch interface. Unlike most other Android based interfaces, this one has an inclination to mimick the iOS and is quite different in experience to other similar phones. The settings menu is also somewhat different from what we are used to seeing in an Android phone, along with a ‘swipe-up from bottom’ control panel for quick access to several functions.
Camera
The V3 Max gets a 13mp back camera with an 8mp front shooter. There is an LED flash at the back. The camera software comes with all the regular features and functions such as Panorama, Night, HD, HDR etc, replete with a manual ‘professional’ mode. For video, you get slow-mo and fast (time lapse) modes as well. Both front and rear cams are capable of taking 1080p videos.
The camera works reasonably well, though it isn’t among the best units we have tested. Images are pixel rich and very detailed in bright conditions, though they tend to turn grainy and lose detail as light drops. We could also have done with a better compensation for extra light in high contrast scenarios where the brighter parts appear to somewhat wash out.
We quite liked the still images produced by the cam. The videos are pretty appreciable too. In all, the V3 Max’s shooter is a decent performer for the price.
Check out full size images taken from the camera in the gallery below. Please click on the images to expand
Performance
This is one area where the V3 Max excels, offering a lag-less, snappy, fluid performance. The 4 GB of generous RAM along with the Snapdragon 652 SoC ensures that the V3 Max handles the heaviest of the applications, even while multi-tasking without exhibiting any difficulty. Even graphic heavy games are handled without a whimper. The Adreno 510GPU definitely comes handy here rendering crisp details without freezing even a single frame.
We found the reception, both cellular and Wi-fi to be excellent. The sound quality is loud and clear, and appreciable for the class, though this isn’t the best set of stereo speakers we have listened to on a phone. VIVO is shipping a free set of earphones which work just fine, though you’d do well to get yourself a pair of quality headphones if you’re a true audiophile, as the signals emanated by the chip circuitry within are A-grade and would translate into great listening pleasure if the speakers are right.
As mentioned before, the battery easily lasts a day even with heavy use, and can last much longer if you are a moderate user. The dual-engine quick charging ensures that you get a good amount of juice re-filled quickly enough whenever you’re close to a complete drainout.
Verdict
The Vivo V3 Max is a very well rounded phone which doesn’t do anything wrong. It’s designed and built well, looks premium, has a good camera, comes loaded with A-grade hardware and has a reliably large battery with quick charging. There’s just one little problem though; the prices of smartphones have been plummeting of late. So much so, that some Chinese smartphone makers have been selling their ‘flagship’ phones for a little over INR 20,000. Despite VIVO’s fairly premium positioning, the V3 Max comes across as fairly pricy and there are somewhat similarly specced phones which are available at a much cheaper price. The V3 MAX scores well in all areas, however, we’re afraid, outright value for money isn’t one of them.
Price : INR 23,980
Technical Specifications and features
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- Basic parameters
- Funtouch OS2.5 based on Android 5.1 Lollipop
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 Octa-core 1.8GHz
- 4GB RAM, 32GB ROM
- Upto 128GB
- Gold
- Body
- 153.9×77.1×7.58mm
- 168g
- 3000mAh
- Metal
- Display
- 13.97cm (5.5)
- FHD (1920×1080)
- IPS
- Multi-touch, Capacitive screen
- Network Frequencies
- Band2/3/5/8
- Band1/5/8
- Band1/3/5/7/8
- Band40
- SAR Value
- 0.952 W/Kg @1g
- 0.697 W/Kg @1g
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- Camera
- 13MP PDAF
- 8MP
- Face Beauty, Panorama, HDR, Night, Ultra HD, PPT, Motion Track, Professional, Slow, Fast, Voice Shutter, Touch Capture, Palm, Timer, Gender Detection, Filter, Watermark
- Ultra HD, Night, Voice Shutter, Touch Capture, Palm, Timer, Gender Detection, Filter, Watermark
- Video
- MP4,AVI,3GP,MKV,WMA
- MP4
- Sounds
- AA,AAC+,AMR,MIDI,OGG,FLAC,WMA,WAV,APE,MP3
- Hi-Fi AKM AK4375
- Sensors
- Connectivity
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Vivo V3 Max Image Gallery
