Vivo has today announced the launch of its latest mid-range smartphone, the Vivo Z1 Pro, in India. The smartphone comes with a price tag of Rs 14,999 for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage option, 6GB RAM + 64GB storage variant is priced at Rs 16,999 and 6GB RAM + 128GB it comes with a price tag of Rs 17,999. and it is available for purchase from Flipkart starting from July 11 at 12:00 noon.
With this, Vivo has introduced its first smartphone in India that comes with a punch-hole design. The smartphone is also the first to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 processor. This coupled with some good camera hardware and interesting design language, Vivo is trying to capture a sizeable chunk of market share. But, can it able to give stiff competition to its rivals? Can be the next big hit after Vivo V15 Pro? Let’s find out.
What are the highs of Vivo Z1 Pro
The first strong point of the Vivo Z1 Pro is the design language. The smartphone comes with a gradient finish at the back, which gives a different pattern when light falls on it. The front comes with an immersive screen, all thanks to the new punch-hole design. This allows a better screen-to-body ratio as compared to other Vivo smartphones in this price range. The phone is a bit tall, but it is quite comfortable to hold in hand. We got the Cosmic Blue colour option for review and it is also available in Cosmic Black and Mirror Black options. That said, it is safe to say that the phone has a strong design language, which looks premium when you hold it in your hands.
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The Vivo Z1 Pro has a 6.53-inch Full HD+ with a screen Resolution of 2280 x 1080 pixels. The display is quite good with vivid colour reproduction and decent viewing angles. Whether it be playing games or watching movies, you will like the immersive display.
Another area where the phone does a good job is performance. The smartphone is the first smartphone that is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 octa-core Processor clocked at 2.3GHz along with Adreno 616 GPU. The phone is available in different configurations, 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM, 6GB RAM + 64GB ROM and 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM. Coming to the performance, you will not feel any shutter or lag when you use it as a daily driver. The apps were quick to open and multitasking was a breeze with this phone.
On the gaming front, the phone handles most of the casual games like a piece of cake. When it comes to high-graphics games like PUBG Mobile, we faced no problem as well. We played the game on high graphics settings and we didn’t notice any stutter or lag during the gaming session. Furthermore, the company has added Game Turbo mode, which further enhances the gaming experience of the smartphone. We particularly liked the 4D game vibration feature that gives haptic feedback.
Moving on, the daylight camera performance of the smartphone is quite decent. The smartphone has a triple-camera setup, which comes with a combination of 16-megapixel primary lens, an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. Starting with the camera UI, you get a host of options to play with like Photo, Video, Fun Video, AR Stickers, AI Beauty, Night, Pano, Pro and Doc. The company has also added AI scene detection and we liked the fact that it suggests you switch between normal and wide-angle or normal and Night mode depending upon the scene.
Coming to the camera performance, the daylight shots came out to crisp in nature and the detailing was on point. The phone was quite fast to lock the focus and it took well-detailed macro shots as well. The wide-angle lens captures a better field of view, but one can still notice some barrel distortion at the edges of the photos. The selfie performance is good in daylight as well and the portraits shots are decent. We liked the AI Portrait lighting mode, which captures photos with different lighting effects. We particularly liked the Rainbow and Monochrome background mode.
Lastly, the battery of the Vivo Z1 Pro is quite impressive. The phone comes with a 5,000mAh battery and it comes with 18W Fast charging support. If you are a regular user then you can expect a battery backup of almost two days. Under power usage, which included streaming on Amazon Prime Videos, playing PUBG Mobile, using Google Maps for navigation and more, the phone lasted till the end of the day, which is a good thing.
The smartphone phone takes almost two hours to get fully charged from 0 per cent to 100 per cent. Apart from this, the fingerprint sensor is fast and so is the face unlock. The speaker volume is loud, but it is not that great, though call connectivity and earpiece volume are fine.
What are the lows of Vivo Z1 Pro
Coming to the lows, we found out that the device attracts lots of smudges both at the front panel and back panel. Thankfully, the company has added a protective case with the device, which protects the back from fingerprints, but the front panel still attracts a lot of dust and smudges, which spoils the mood. Furthermore, the screen is a bit reflective, which makes it a difficult job to watch the text in outdoor light conditions.
Although the daylight performance is excellent of this smartphone, in the low light condition it shimmers a bit. The photos taken in low light condition came out to be a bit softly-focused and the detailing was not that great in our opinion. The night mode brightens up the image, but the quality goes for a toss. We also noticed that the subject was softly focused when we took a portrait shot. Selfie performance was marginally better than the rear during our testing.
The Vivo’s FunTouch OS comes loaded with a host of exciting features and there are lots of customisation options, which is good. The UI is smooth and fast to operate, though it has its share of misses as well. First of all, the Settings and whole user interface still look heavily inspired by Apple’s iOS. Secondly, the Settings menu is a bit complex, which makes it a bit difficult to navigate for the desired settings. The company has added a global search option, but it is not that as compared to the same feature available in other smartphones. So, for instance, when typing in the global search, you have to press enter first to search for the App or settings, which is not the case with other smartphones.
Thirdly, the user interface comes loaded with a lot of bloatware. You get company’s apps like i Manager, Albums, Weather, i Music, V-Appstore, i Theme, Videos, Email, EasyShare, GameCenter, Tips, Vivo.com and more. Then there are third-party apps like Google Duo, UC Browser, Gaana, Amazon Shopping, PhonePe, Paytm, Google News, Dailyhunt, Webnoval, Facebook, WhatsApp and WPS Office. Although can delete the third-party apps, there is no option to remove the company’s application.