Vivo V9 6GB Review | Solid Performer in the Budget Bunch

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Vivo V9 is another budget device from Vivo with a solid looking aesthetics. It surely took some design hints from higher end Flagship models using a high quality plastic design which mimics a glass look. It also sports a Dual camera setup and a powerful SoC to handle gaming tasks well.

Let’s take a closer look at the Vivo V9 in-depth review.

Design and Build

Vivo V9 looks quite similar to many budget smartphones in 2018. For starters, it has a notch enveloped by a big display. The rear panel on the V9 also mimics the Glass design but it is made up of high quality plastics material. Although, it’s not glass but it feels quite premium. Also, the plastic back captures the fingerprint smudges quite fast.

Once you lift the device up, you will immediately notice the light weight and slim profile of the device. Vivo V9 is just 7.9 mm thick and weighs only 150 grams which is surprisingly low. The device feels pretty comfortable to use but since the display is huge, you have to use the second hand to reach the opposite top corner of the display. The V9 is available in only two color options which are Red and Blue.

Upfront, Vivo V9 embraces a notch which houses an earpiece, front camera, proximity sensor, notification LED and an ambient light sensor. The display is pretty big and there are no physical or capacitive buttons on the front. On the left side, there is just the SIM tray while on the right are the Power key and Volume rocker. Down at the bottom, there is a single down firing speaker with a Micro USB charging port and a Headphone jack.

Moving to the back, the Dual camera is placed in the top left corner in a vertical position. The back also houses a fingerprint scanner. Overall, the design looks great, however, the V9 lack the IP certification for dust and water resistance, pretty common in budget devices

Display

The Vivo V9 houses a pretty big 6.3 inches display with a notch. However, the notch is pretty small compared to the device like the iPhone XS. The bezels around the display are not the thinnest you can find but looks quite immersive. However, the chin is significantly bigger like on the Moto G6. Talking about the display, it is a 6.3 inches IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2280 pixels and pixel density of 400 pixels-per-inch.

Vivo V9’s display with Full HD resolution is plenty sharp but has a reddish tint to it. The colors look good while the viewing angles are just average. Sunlight visibility is also decent. Although, if you are not going to compare the display on the V9 with other high-end devices, you are not going to notice any huge quality drop. It’s a good display for the price and multimedia consumption on it looks simply immersive. Also, it comes with a pre-applied screen protector so that’s a plus. Overall, it’s a pretty good display for the price.

Performance and Software

Vivo’s decision to go with the Snapdragon 660 chipset on the 6GB RAM version is pretty great actually. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 is a powerful mid-range Octa-core chip clocked at a frequency of 2.2 GHz. For graphics, the Snap 660 is bundled with Adreno 512 which is able to handle demanding games pretty well.

With that being said, the performance on the Vivo V9 is simply great. Handling daily usage like social media, web browsing, etc is pretty easy for the V9. Also, demanding games like the PUBG, Asphalt 9 runs really well on the V9. Performance is no issue on the Vivo V9 since the Snap 660 is pretty powerful and only few budget device uses this SoC including the Mi A2.

The V9 comes in only a single variant which includes 6GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. However, it comes with a dedicated MicroSD card slot to make things easy. It supports memory expansion up to 256 GB which is plenty enough even for the power user.

The Vivo V9 is running on the Android 8.1 Oreo with Vivo Funtouch OS o top. While the skin mimics the iOS style quite a bit including features like swipe up for control center and similar looking settings menu, there are plenty of other useful features too. For starters, it has a Picture-in-Picture mode. It also has Gesture-based navigation option which completely hides the Navigation bar and allow gestures like Swipe up from a bottom center for Home, swipe up and hold for app switcher etc.

There are other gestures too like Double tap on the screen to wake up or sleep the device, a gaming mode which block the on-screen notification while gaming and also boosts the gaming performance. You can also draw gestures on the Off-screen to open a particular app. There are a plenty of other features too but the main question here is about the software update. Vivo V9 has no official Android Pie release date which can be deal breaker for people who concerns software updates.

Camera

The Vivo V9 houses a 13 Megapixel camera unit on the back with f/2.2 aperture along with a 2 Megapixel depth sensor. Upfront, the notch houses a 12 Megapixel sensor with f/2.0 aperture. The camera app has all the useful features like HDR, panorama, and more. Talking about the quality, it pretty good actually with decent colors and dynamic range. Images have plenty of details and sharpness. Although, the quality degrades in areas with low-light. Images turn out to be blurry and are noisy due to the lack of OIS.

The portrait mode on the V9 is just average as the edge detection is pretty much miss than hit. Also, the blurred background looks pretty artificial. The real cam can also record 1080p videos at 30Fps but lacks stabilization. On the front, the 12 MP sensor takes good photos with decent colors and details. However, similar to the primary cam, the level of details drops to average.

Battery Life

The battery life on the Vivo V9 is pretty average as with heavy usage, you will end up looking for the charger before the end of the day. Such results on the V9 is due to the fact that it houses a 3260 mAh battery which is pretty average considering other budget devices with even bigger batteries.

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