Vivo launched its first bezel-less smartphone, V7+, in India on Thursday, joining brands like Samsung, LG, Micromax and soon Apple. The new 18:9 aspect ratio display design managed to keep the spectators hooked during the Mumbai event.

Vivo V7+ is targeted at the mid-range shoppers, and count the selfie camera and FullView Display as its biggest USPs. The handset is priced at Rs 21,990, which doesn't come as a surprise as the company's selfie-centric phones are priced in the same range.

We had the chance to briefly test the phone during the launch event and here's what we think of V7+.

Design and Display

As we mentioned, the display is the standout feature in the V7+, and it is bound to impress consumers as well. The FullView Display, as Vivo calls it, comes with an 18:9 aspect ratio, which doesn't make 5.99-inch screen size uncomfortable to hold. We were sceptical about the display's HD resolution, which has 720 x 1440 pixels spread across the massive screen, and the washed out colours are visible while compared with a Full HD display.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

The HD display in the V7+ does a fair job to the most extent and doesn't compromise readability. The 2.15mm bezels take the attention away from the lack of true colours. The 2.5D curved glass conceals the bezels extremely well, giving the V7+ an edge-to-edge look.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

Vivo did not waste any space on the display. There are no visible buttons for back and home function, instead, Vivo took a unique approach here. Swiping up on the extreme bottom right works as a back option, swiping up from the centre bottom take you to home screen and the extreme left bottom brings up the notification space.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan
Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

Turning over the phone gives a standard metallic finish with antenna bands running along the top and bottom corners. There's a single rear camera module with LED flash at the back and the speaker grille sits at the bottom alongside the microUSB slot and 3.5mm audio jack.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

Surprisingly, Vivo ditched its popular dual camera setup for selfies in the V7+, instead chose to go with a higher megapixel lens. Let's discuss that in detail.

Camera

The front camera has a 24MP lens f/2.0 aperture, 1/2.78-inch sensor, and a 'Moonlight Glow' soft selfie light. With artificial lighting, the selfies delivered by the V7+ had excess saturation. The beauty mode with skin smoothing, skin tone adjustment and whitening make your selfies better, but at the expense of looking artificial. We also noticed some noise in photos shot under average lights.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

The selfie results came as a surprise considering Vivo touted its front camera to deliver great results. We are yet to test the front camera in various lighting conditions, so we'll hold our final verdict until it's done.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

Coming to the rear camera, the results were surprisingly good for a 16-megapixel rear camera with an f/2.0 aperture. Low lighting did not seem to impact the quality of the photos too much. Even though noise persisted, the camera did well by balancing colours and contrast.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

Check out some sample shots below:

1/6
  • Vivo V7  camera sample
    Vivo V7 camera sampleIBTimes, India/Sami Khan
  • Vivo V7  camera sample
    Vivo V7 camera sampleIBTimes, India/Sami Khan
  • Vivo V7  camera sample
    Vivo V7 camera samplenull
  • Vivo V7  camera sample
    Vivo V7 camera sampleIBTimes, India/Sami Khan
  • Vivo V7  camera sample
    Vivo V7 camera sampleIBTimes, India/Sami Khan
  • Vivo V7  camera sample
    Vivo V7 camera sampleIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

Performance

Vivo V7+ comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core chipset paired with 4GB RAM. During our brief time with the phone, the handset did an impressive job. The apps were responsive and no lag was noticed. The fingerprint scanner was also able to authenticate and unlock the device in a matter of seconds. Vivo also boasts of facial recognition feature, which we are yet to test out.

Vivo V7  quick review
Vivo V7 quick reviewIBTimes, India/Sami Khan

So far, there haven't been any red flags for the V7+ performance.

Under the hood, the phone packs a 3,225mAh battery. Given the specs of the phone, the battery can easily last up to 8-9 hours. But when we had the time to charge the phone, it seemed to take quite long. This wasn't unexpected since the phone lacks a USB Type-C charging port.

Vivo V7+ has standard connectivity options such as 4G VoLTE, dual SIM support and a microSD card slot for extra storage up to 256GB in addition to the onboard 64GB. The phone comes in two colours, Gold and Matte Black. The latter is a fingerprint magnet, but we did not have a chance to check out the gold hue. We'll look into the phone in more detail. Stay tuned for the full review.