Following the launch of the Vivo V17 smartphone back in January this year, Vivo has recently brought in another exciting V-series smartphone to the local market – Vivo V19.
As with any other V-series smartphones, the new Vivo V19 continues to embrace philosophy of bringing cutting-edge camera technologies to mid-ranger smartphones without bursting the bank.
This time round, not only does the Vivo V19 scores well in photography, it also offers a perfect blend of class and performance.
However, in such a saturated mid-ranger smartphone market, will the Vivo V19 be able to stand out of the crowd? Let’s find out in this review!
Design & Display
No doubt, the Vivo V19 has one of the most classy design among all mid-ranger smartphones we’d seen so far. This is especially true for the Gleam Black model which I’d received for review.
The Vivo V17 is built upon a slim and ergonomic design with gradual curves along the two sides of its rear panel. Coupled with its feather light weight, the device certainly feels good on the hand and allows easy single-handed use.
Besides that, its rear panel is also shielded by a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 6 which protects the device against scratches and accidental drops. Needless to say, the glass finish at the back also offers a more premium outlook.
Somehow, the Vivo V19 reminds me of the Ceramic Black variant of the OPPO Find X2 Pro. However, its glossy backplate do pick up fingerprints pretty easily and occasionally leave some unsightly smudges.
To complete its rear package, there will be a rectangular camera bump located on its upper-left corner which play host to a quad-cameras array and a LED flash.
The front panel features a dual hole-punch cutout on the top-right corner to accommodate a pair of front-facing selfie cameras. It is in fact the first Vivo smartphone to come with a dual hole-punch design.
Coming to the specifics, the front display is a Super AMOLED display which measures 6.44-inches diagonally. It’s 1,200 nits peak brightness ensures the screen is always visible at all viewing angles or even under direct sunlight.
On top of that, its HDR10 compatibility also enhances the color and provides more details to the entertainment contents it is playing. This is certainly a momentous upgrade over its Vivo V17 predecessor.
With all the advanced display technologies, the Vivo V19 is able to deliver a vibrant and punchy graphics for its users. However, I believe the Vivo V19 could have done even better with a higher refresh rate above 60Hz.
That isn’t much to ask for keeping in mind that we are seeing more mid-rangers including the Realme 6 and 6 Pro with at least 90Hz screen refresh rate.
Performance & Gaming
Under the hood, the Vivo V19 is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 712 platform designed by Qualcomm. Once again, this is another notable update over its V17 and V17 Pro predecessors which run on a slightly weaker Snapdragon 6-series SoCs.
The Snapdragon 712 platform features an octa-core architecture manufactured under a 10nm process. It consists of eight Qualcomm Kryo 360 CPU cores which have a maximum clock speed of 2.3GHz. On the graphical-end, it will be supported by an Adreno 616 GPU.
Although the Snapdragon 712 isn’t the most powerful chipset in the market, but it do offers more than enough processing power for most of the mobile game titles including PUBG Mobile.
To give myself a benchmark of its performance, I’d tried to play PUBG Mobile on the device for a couple of hours under the default settings. As expected, the overall game play remain smooth and consistent with no visible hitching even as the device starts to heat up.
In order to enhance the gaming experience of its users, the Funtouch OS 10 comes with an Ultra Game mode which provides various tools and optimizations that users could harness according to their preferences.
Some of the more notable features within the Ultra Game mode I found particularly useful include the “Esports Mode” which (when toggled on) will help to ensure optimal performance on the handset via its smart system resource management algorithm.
Other than that, it also helps to minimize disturbance by turning off background notifications which are real annoyance. In fact, you can even block unwanted calls within the Ultra Game mode as it provides you the ability to whitelist mobile numbers, and automatically rejects other numbers originating outside the list.
The unparalleled performance of the Vivo V19 coupled with its highly customizable game mode will instantly fires up your game play to another level – without having the need to spend big bucks for a gaming-centric flagship.
Camera
As expected, one of the headlining features of the Vivo V19 will be its revolutionary camera system which has evolved overtime with more sophisticated software tweaks and AI system.
The Vivo V19 has a quad-cameras array at the back consisting of a 48 megapixels (f/1.8 aperture) main camera which makes use of 4-in-1 pixel binning technology which delivers 12 megapixels shots by default.
It’s main camera will be supported by an 8 megapixels (f/2.2 aperture) ultra-wide lens, 2 megapixels (f/2.4 aperture) macro camera, as well as a 2 megapixels (f/2.4 aperture) depth helper.
In the default shooting mode, the pixel binned images deliver realistic colors with in-depth details. Overall, it has well-balanced color saturation and wide dynamic range which produce images that are pleasing to the eyes.
For night scenes, its rear camera will automatically switch over to a dedicated night mode which adds optimal brightness to ensure the image is clear and detailed, without being overexposed. Its good to see that the noise level of the night shots are also being well-controlled.
However, I do some difference when switched over to it’s ultra-wide mode. Its quite obvious that the dynamic range of the image has been slightly reduced along with the sharpness of the image.
Although the Vivo V19 doesn’t come with any dedicated telephoto lens, but the device is still able to support up to 10x digital zoom with the help of it’s camera software.
At 2x zoom, the quality of the image remain very well preserved. Even at 5x zoom (top image), the image is still pretty much usable even though it becomes slightly grainier.
As with any other smartphones, we can’t possibly demand high-quality images at 10x zoom. However, we are still able to easily glean out words and numbers at the maximum zoom level – so it will still come in handy to us.
Marco Sample #1 
Marco Sample #2
Coming to it’s close-up shots, the Vivo V19 continues to impress in this aspect as well. The subject in the image is well isolated with nice bokeh effects on the background. However, the colors do appear overly saturated at times (Macro Sample #2).
Last but not the least, its camera department will be rounded up with a pair of 32 megapixels (f/2.1 aperture) primary shooter as well as an 8 megapixels (f/2.3 aperture) ultra-wide lens at the front.
Overall, its selfie cameras live up to my expectations too. The 32 megapixels selfie camera is able to capture images with good exposure accompanied by good color balance.
One of the main highlights of the selfie camera is none other than its Super Night Mode which ensures good illumination even under low-light environment.
As for the 8 megapixels ultra-wide lens, its certainly a good add-on even though its usage is generally limited to group selfies.
Battery & Charging
At the helm, the Vivo V19 draws power from a 4,500mAh battery which carries support for Vivo’s 33W Flash Charge 2.0 technology. Just like most other smartphones with fast-charging support, the device will also be charged via the USB Type-C port which sits on the bottom frame of the device.
Under normal usage condition, the 4,500mAh battery could easily last more than a day with one single charge. This include several hours of cumulative web browsing and social media consumption, or even one or two games of PUBG Mobile. Therefore, its undeniable that the Vivo V19 has a really tough battery life.
With regards to its charging speed, the Vivo V19 took around 30 mins to refuel from the 0 to 50% mark, and slightly more than an hour for a full charge. That’s certainly good enough for an upper mid-ranger handset in my opinion.
Pricing & Availability
The Vivo V19 is currently available through local telcos, as well as other online and offline channels.
Pricing for the device start from as low as S$0 under a two-years mobile contract with M1, Singtel or StarHub. Otherwise, it will be available at an off-contract price of S$599 via Lazada or Shopee.
