Vivo V30 Lite 4G is the latest entrant in the country’s highly competitive 35K price range of smartphones. It joins the Vivo V30 in the camera-centric lineup launched a couple of weeks before and you can read its review here.
Vivo V30 Lite 4G serves up top performance, amazing battery life, and capable cameras in a stylish and attractive package for an amazing price. The phone is now available to buy this week after its pre-order period. We’ve been using it for a good amount of time and here’s our in-depth review.
UNBOXING
Vivo V30 Lite 4G comes in a silver box that includes paperwork, a transparent back case, sim ejector tool, an 80W charging brick(same as the Vivo V30), and a Type-C cable, and the phone has a pre-applied plastic screen protector.
DESIGN
Vivo V30 Lite 4G has a clean but attractive look and the unit on hand comes in what the company calls Breeze Green colour and is eye-popping. It’s a vibrant and striking showstopper with its colour-changing aesthetic and this is the colour option I’d recommend anyone to get.
You get a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen rocking a 120Hz refresh rate with a 2400 by 1080 pixel resolution protected by Asahi Glass AGC DT-Star 2 Plus.
The screen is smooth, big and bright with peak brightness peaking at 1200 nits so you’ll have no problem when you’re out and about now that we’re back to sunny afternoons. The display offers sharp image quality and strong contrast making it a joy when consuming multimedia content and gaming.
The phone comes with an IP54 rating like its sibling for dust and water resistance – another handy feature when you’re caught in the random downpours.
Other features include an in-display fingerprint reader and stereo speakers.
PERFORMANCE
Unlike its rivals in this price point which use MediaTek’s Helio G99 processor, Vivo picked the much newer Snapdragon 685 chipset to be at the helm of the V30 Lite 4G. It also packs 256GB storage, 8GB onboard RAM and an additional 8GB virtual RAM.
The V30 Lite 4G ships with Android 14 and FuntouchOS 14 straight out of the box. It is poised to get 2 years of Android OS upgrades and three years of monthly security updates. As we have seen from the software upgrades the Vivo V27 and the V29 have received, the company will bring these updates in a timely fashion so you’re well sorted in that sector.
The software and hardware combination boast fine everyday performance and the phone runs a lot faster than I expected and is one of the most reliable midrange smartphones in Kenya for gaming. At medium graphics settings, the phone handled both light and heavy games really well – including Shadow Fight 4: Arena, Alto’s Odyssey, Ninja Arashi 2, Asphalt 9, Genshin Impact, PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile.
Moderate and light use such as checking social media, emails, and browsing the web will all be pretty smooth with this phone thanks to its speedy performance.
BATTERY LIFE
Powering this phone is a 5000mAh battery which gave me on average 2 days of usage from a single charge with moderate use and light use which is really impressive. With heavy usage, yo can still get an hour or two of juice left at bedtime.
You get 80W fast Type-C charging which means that you can top up from 16% to 93% in 34 minutes – this is the fastest charging speed for any phone in the midmarket range in the country. You’ll have to enable this feature in the battery settings.
Another neat feature you’ll notice is the battery capacity status to show battery health – this feature is coming with Android 15 and I’m glad Vivo already has it.
Vivo has said that the phone will have an 80% battery health even after using the device for 4 years(1600 charge cycles)
CAMERAS
For cameras, the Vivo V30 Lite 4G has a dual rear setup consisting of a 50MP main and 2MP depth sensor and an 8MP selfie camera. Video recording is capped at 1080p 30fps for the main and front-facing cameras.
I took several shots with the phone and one thing you’ll notice is that the phone opts for a more flatter look with a close-to-natural look in its pictures instead of going for a punchier look for the colours. Selfies and portraits and really good and the lowlight shots look better than expected.
VERDICT
V30 Lite 4G sits in a sweet spot as the company’s long-lasting showstopper with an incredibly cool design and top performance. It has an attractive colour-changing back, a beautiful screen, more than reliable performance, capable camera performance, ultra-fast charging and battery endurance.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
Vivo V30 Lite 4G goes for Ksh 34,999 available on Vivo’s official retail stores countrywide and partner e-commerce sites.
V30 Lite 4G has a 2-year warranty period and 100-day free screen replacement.
