Vivo’s V series has been a line-up of sleekly designed smartphones with pretty good performance and a better-than-typical camera set up. From this year’s series, the V25 Pro is in for review in a pretty “Sailing Blue” colour that we’ve seen before on the V phones. There was a beautiful ‘Sunset Melody’ that I remember looked particularly pretty. The other variant is a black and it doesn’t do the fun change of colour you’ll find on the blue.
Colourful trick
The V25 Pro is a device that feels thinner than it is because of its curved sides, both back and front. This is supposed to give it a premium look - and I suppose it does, though it does add to slipperiness and a weaker grip. The back panel is in a matte fluorite AG glass and looks quite pretty, but it’s main party trick is that it will change colour in the sunlight - or any UV light. We’ve seen this before on previous phones in this series. What is most fun to do is to place something over the back and put the phone out in the sun for a short while. The covered parts will be in a lighter shade while the rest will contrast a little. You can make up a quick stencil with a pattern or your name and use it for this colour changing trick. It’s a fun pastime, but after the novelty wears off likely to be quite forgotten. After everyone’s finished admiring it and being amazed, well, what next?
I suppose one can just get down to using the phone. As you set it up you’ll encounter the dozens and dozens of agreements you have to tick to proceed. These have now become typical of Vivo and are seeping into OnePlus phones as well. It’s Vivo trying to play it safe. When you finish setting up you’ll find the V25 Pro has quite a nice screen. It’s a 6.5-inch P-OLED with nice colour reproduction and angles and a 120Hz refresh rate while we’re at it. It’s a bright 1300nits display. There’s a speaker grill only at the bottom of the screen. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack. The fingerprint sensor is under-display and works moderately well.
The V25 Pro uses the MediaTek Dimensity 1300 5G chip with 8GB+8GB extended RAM or 12GB+8GB extended RAM. Storage options are 128GB and 256GB. The extended or virtual RAM can be deployed when gaming. Temperature management is done through the phone’s “Bionic Cooling System”. Android 12 has a layer of Vivo’s FunTouchOS 12 over it. There are, of course, several unwanted apps along for the ride but nothing much by way of nagging notifications. Perhaps I was just lucky. Either way, offload the offending apps and get done with it.
Capable camera
Colour gimmicks notwithstanding, it’s the cameras that users will end up appreciating more. There’s a 64MP primary camera and it has both optical and electronic stabilisation. This greatly improves the type of photographs you can capture from the device. Night photos are specially nice and well processed, in real time. HDR works well too. The stabilisation works for steady video. There’s an 8MP ultra wide and a 2MP macro. The front camera is a 32MP and does well with skin tones. The camera set is supported with a full-featured camera app, leaving the user to really explore creative shots and vlogging. Bokeh is particularly customisable on this phone’s cameras.
The V25 Pro comes with a 4,830mAh battery with 66W fast charging. This really adds to this device being an all-rounder. It’s also priced reasonably at a starting point of Rs 35,999. Look for deals and schemes.