Smartphone design is an important aspect when choosing your phone as you’d need one with a design that stands out. But more than just looks, it should showcase impressive performance and have nice cameras. That’s what Vivo latest midrange smartphone – the Vivo V25 5G brings to the table.
Vivo added extra effort not only when it comes to how your phone looks but also how it performs and brought upgrades to its cameras as well.
Vivo V25 5G is the direct successor to the Vivo V23 5G which launched ten months ago in the country.
It comes in a grey box that has its accessories which are the wired earphones, a case, a 44W fast charger, a type-C to headphone jack dongle, a quick start guide, a warranty card and a sim ejector tool.
DESIGN
Vivo used the same colour-changing design as its predecessor. We got our unit in Aquamarine Blue and it is spectacular to the eyes as it features a special ripple pattern that gives off beautiful blue hues. It also comes in sunrise gold and diamond black and in my opinion, the blue one is the most gorgeous one.
This design stands out as the colour darkens in tone when outdoors under direct sunlight or UV light and it gets bluer than the turquoise it originally comes in.
The back features a matte finish that is fingerprint free and has a luxurious feel to the touch. This is a solid build with slender flat edges that make it stand on its own. It has a plastic frame and is slim too at 7.79mm making it easier to use.
The top left features the camera module rocking three lenses and a led flashlight.
At the bottom edge is the speaker grille, type-c port, microphone and sim card slot. On the right spine are the power button and volume rocker buttons.
At the top edge is a secondary microphone.
Coming to the front is the 6.44-inch AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support, slightly disrupted by the U-shaped notch.
We have face unlock and an under-display fingerprint scanner for biometrics. The scanner is snappy for unlocking your phone
The display is beautiful offering deep black and saturated colours perfect for multimedia consumption. And at 1300 nits of brightness, you can comfortably use it when you’re out and about.
The Vivo V25 was made to impress and it certainly does that effectively.
PERFORMANCE
Vivo V25 5Gcomes with a MediaTek Dimensity 900 5G processor paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. With the Extended RAM 3.0 feature, you can add up to 8GB of virtual RAM.
Vivo V25 5G boots FunTouchOS 12 and Android 12.
Besides Android 12 features, FunTouch OS 12 ships with a new UI design and a refreshing look and feel that offers a clean visual experience plus small widgets that fit more on the homescreen. There’s a nano music player that sits on the home screen and offers quick access to your local or Spotify playlist.
Another handy feature is the Game Boost mode which offers an immersive gaming experience. It automatically manages CPU/GPU, RAM, and network performance while also optimizing the touch response.
All these software and hardware features ensure the phone runs smoothly even on demanding tasks.
I was effortlessly switching between apps, browsing the web, streaming music, binge-watching movies, scrolling social media, and gaming and the phone showed no lag at all.
5G SITUATION
Vivo V25 is a 5G smartphone and we tested it using Safaricom’s 5G network at Two Rivers mall and we averaged around 154Mbps in terms of speeds.
You’re bound to get competitive 5G performance when you connect to some 5G spots in the country.
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CAMERAS
Vivo V25 5G comes with four cameras – three at the back and one at the front. We have a 64MP primary sensor with OIS coupled with an 8MP ultrawide and a 2MP macro sensor.
For the front, we sport a 50MP selfie camera housed in the notch.
Apart from the upgrades in the optics, we also have a few photography features to play around with such as Vlog Movie with premade templates, Dual View mode, Double Exposure, Pro Mode, High Resolution and more.
My favourite was the Vlog Movie feature that lets you use vlog templates with themes such as Night, Outing, food, child, city, travel and more to create short videos fit for social media sharing on TikTok or Instagram Stories or Reels.
The phone performs exceptionally well in bright light. Shots come out with pleasing colours, details and dynamic range. I loved how it handles background exposure.
When the sun sets, Vivo V25 continues with its impressive performance, especially with the night mode. Colours and details are retained despite the lowlight scenarios.
If you take lots of food pictures and videos, you’ll love this camera.
The videos are bright too even in low light. Overall, you have a dependable camera smartphone at hand with the Vivo V25.
BATTERY LIFE
Vivo V25 comes with a beefy 4500mAh battery that supports 44W fast charging. It held up a day and a half on normal use and I was averaging 7 hours of screen-on time. By the time I was laying in bed at night, I had about 27% of charge to squeeze for my late-night scrolling on social media and browsing the web which was great.
If you run out of power, you can charge up in about an hour.
VERDICT
Not only are you getting a really good-looking phone with an exquisite design with the Vivo V25 – you are also getting a really good stack of cameras, respectable battery life, a really nice screen and most importantly, undisputed performance.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
Vivo v25 goes for Ksh 56,999 and is available at Vivo’s retail stores countrywide and partner e-commerce sites.
