vivo V20 Review: A Strong Focus on Aesthetics

​The vivo V20 is one of the latest additions in the brand’s growing repertoire of smartphones. We were lucky enough to get a chance to get a look at the vivo V20 and see how its design and features separate it from other midrange smartphones in the current market.

vivo V20

Unboxing

The vivo V20 is encased in the brand’s premium-looking box with its name embossed right at the front. Inside is the smartphone itself alongside with the complementary assortment of accessories such as its documentation, a silicone case, a SIM pin ejector, a pair of earphones, a USB Type-C cable, and a 33W charging adapter. Not too much out of the ordinary but it works well enough to get most users started.

Screen and Design

The vivo V20 comes with a 6.44-inch 2400 x 1080 AMOLED display with an integrated fingerprint scanner. Although the display does not have the capability to run at 90Hz, it makes up for it by delivering vibrant colors with admirable contrast and saturation as well as deep blacks. This allows it to become a spectacular device when watching content.

It is available in two different colors in the Philippines: Midnight Jazz and Sunset Melody. The one we got for this review is the latter variant and we cannot imagine getting the V20 in another color. It’s hard to pinpoint what color Sunset Melody is as it is able to change into different colors in varying lighting conditions.

The rear design is able to shift between light blue, purple, pink, and orange depending on how light hits it. Regardless of its current color, the v20 is undeniably a beautiful and striking smartphone to look at. The back material is also able deflect fingerprints and oil when it isn’t protected by a case, which adds to its overall premium feel.

Button placement on the V20 is kept standard with the volume rocker and power button being located at its right-hand side. Its SIM tray – which can accommodate two SIM cards and a MicroSD card – is located at the other side. Its 3.5mm jack, speaker grilles, and USB Type-C port are all conveniently placed at the bottom.

User Interface

The vivo V20 is among a few smartphones to come with Android 11 out of the box. On top is the brand’s Funtouch OS 11, which largely sticks to a stock Android experience. Usage with the V20’s OS is smooth without any hitches nor any weird quirks.

Aside from the usual bloatware that comes with any vivo smartphone, the V20 comes with a couple of standard extras such as the brand’s Jovi Assistant and Ultra Game Mode, the latter of which assists you with helpful shortcuts and quick optimization while in-game.

Camera

The vivo V20 comes with three cameras at the rear: a 64MP f/1.89 main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide, and a 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor. While most of these will sound pretty standard for a smartphone, vivo is backing them with quite a few new improvements on the software which include Dual-View video, Multi-Style Portrait, 3D Sound Tracking, Eye Autofocus, and Body/Object Autofocus.

Snaps taken with the primary 64MP f/1.89 come out great with punchy colors and decent contrast. Fine details are present though they can be a bit lost especially in darker scenes. Overall, a pretty commendable effort from a midrange smartphone.

The 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide can hold its own as well. Its wide angle allows you to fit in more subjects in a frame while still preserving decent colors and details. Oddly enough, the ultrawide also doubles as a macro lens which can take acceptable close up shots though we prefer using the main camera for this purpose.

Smack-dab in the middle of the top portion of the display is a notch that houses the V20’s 44MP f/2.0 selfie camera. Like its rear cameras, the front camera is able to take advantage of Eye Autofocus to keep your selfies sharp. Selfies taken with the V20 come out natural-looking most of the time although the automatic beautification can be sometimes too aggressive.

Performance, Benchmarks, and Battery Life

Inside the vivo V20’s colorful chassis is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage. While it isn’t the most powerful chip in the midrange category, it performs well enough that the device won’t lag behind other smartphones in the market.

Under normal conditions, the V20 performed fairly fast on our tasks. Playing games such as Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG do not pose any problems for the device. In terms of benchmarks, it can pump out decent numbers in our test suite including 7,316 in PCMark Work 2.0, 2,594 in Sling Shot Extreme with the OpenGL API, and just below the 300,000 mark in AnTuTu.

As for its battery, the V20 packs a 4,000mAh battery that can be charged via its USB Type-C connection with support for the brand’s 33W Flash Charging. Using the device can last throughout the day with medium use and occasional gaming and mobile data usage with enough juice to watch a few shows at the end of the day.

PCMark Work 2.0 puts the device just above the 15 hour mark with medium brightness and volume, which is pretty impressive given that some devices with larger battery capacities also reaches this time.

Conclusion

While the vivo V20 does not have some of the features that are becoming more and more common such as a 90Hz display, both its software and hardware are able to work in tandem to offer a remarkably solid performance for a midrange smartphone.

The design of the vivo V20 makes it stand out among its competition. Its eye-catching design might not be for everyone, but it is undoubtedly striking. Paired with decent performance from its chipset, cameras, and battery, then the device becomes a strong contender for the money.

We don’t have the price of the vivo V20 yet at the time of this review. Rumors put it at the PhP 20,000 mark. We will update this review once we get word from vivo about its pricing.