Vivo V19: Worth every penny to own a flagship in COVID-19 times

In a 50-day long nationwide lockdown, and still counting, smartphone lovers have not seen much happening in terms of new devices being launched and made available. Now, India's number 2 brand Vivo has brought much-awaited V19 to a market that is still not fully opened but a flurry of activity now being seen in green and orange zones in the country.

Touted as another stellar device in its popular V-series, Vivo intended to originally launch the device in March in the country but delayed it owing to reasons known to all.

Like previous ‘V' series devices, V19 focuses on presenting a premium design language and outstanding cameras to the mid-price segment of the market.

Available in Piano Black and Mystic Silver colour options, the smartphone comes in two variants — the base model packs 8GB RAM and 128GB of internal storage while the top-end model includes 8GB RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The pricing of the Vivo V19 Pro in India starts at Rs 27,990 and goes up to Rs 31,990.

Let us see how it fares in real life.

In terms of design, the phone sports a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom edge, a USB Type-C port, speaker grille and the primary microphone.

There is a power button and a volume rocker on the right. There is a secondary noise-canceling microphone up top and the left edge only has a SIM tray with two SIMs and a dedicated microSD card slot.

At the back is the quad-camera setup and the Vivo branding in a neat format.

The real camera setup packs a 48MP main shooter with f/1.79 aperture, an 8MP wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture, and two 2MP cameras with f/2.4 aperture for macro and bokeh functions.

Rear camera features include super-night mode, ultra-stable video, art portrait video, super macro, and bokeh portrait.

Even though under restricted movement, images shot outdoors showed bright colours with rich details. The images clicked even at night had decent detail.

The device features a dual punch hole camera with a 32MP primary selfie shooter assisted by a 8MP ultra-wide angle lens, capturing best shot in any scenario.

The dual camera on the front, the company claims, is the smallest punch hole in the world right now.

The Super Night Mode in the V19 helped capture neat selfies even in low-lights. This mode packs the unique 'Multiple-Exposure' technique, which merges 14 different frames at multiple exposure values reducing the noise of low-light photos.

The smartphone features 6.44-inch LIV Super AMOLED FHD+ display made of the latest E3 OLED and features an aspect ratio of 20:9. It also offers to bring vibrant and authentic colours come to life with its 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour gamut and supports HDR 10 standard.

The V19 screen brightness ranges between 1.9nits to 800 nits and through the customized sunlight display algorithm, some parts of the screen can go up to 1200 nits which made the screen clearly visible even in bright sunlight.

During the review, we used the smartphone to stream Amazon Prime's latest series ‘Panchayat' and liked the overall quality of the display.

The device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 SoC with 8GB RAM with 128GB/256GB of internal storage.

During the review period which was mostly at home, we played games like PUBG: Mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile and in HD settings, we were able to play the game quite smoothly.

The phone did not lag during daily usage with multiple apps in the background.

To ensure smooth multi-tasking, the device features the latest innovative Copper Tube Liquid Cooling Technology that reduces the CPU junction temperature by up to 3 degree Celsius to 7 degree Celsius. This helps in delivering longer CPU life and increasing the overall smartphone performance.

The Vivo V19 comes with a massive 4,500mAh battery with 33W fast charging support. The phone charged about 50 per cent in half an hour of charging.

Conclusion: If you do not want to spend much to own a top-end flagship device, V19 is worth trying. The device comes with a great battery life and decent processing power.

V19 will go on sale starting May 15 via the company's own e-store, Amazon, Flipkart, other e-commerce websites, and partner offline stores. If you live in green or orange zone, go for it. Lockdown 4.0 from May 18 is coming with more relaxations so receiving the device in your area will become easier.