Vivo X70 Pro Plus review

2-minute review

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is the absolute best smartphone that the company has to offer in the lineup of its newest flagships. Vivo has been trying to climb its way up to the top-tier flagship segment for a while now, and it may have just cracked the formula with the Vivo X70 Pro Plus. 

While the previous mainstream flagships from Vivo like the Vivo X60 Pro have given us a taste of what the company can do in association with the lens maker Zeiss, the company truly hit the mark with the present generation of flagship smartphones. 

And the confidence from the company shows with the pricing of the smartphone. Vivo has previously avoided competing directly with the top contenders when it came to pricing, but the Rs 79,990 mark of the Vivo X70 Pro Plus seems to exude the notion from the company that it is ready to play with the big boys. 

And that confidence is not unfounded and is based on the number of flagship specifications and features offered in the smartphone. The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is the first smartphone in India to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset and a proprietary V1 chip that is dedicated to camera functions. 

In fact, the cameras and the features on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus are so extensive it often feels like it is more of a camera than a smartphone. Although its capabilities as a smartphone are still top-notch be it gaming, watching media, or browsing social. 

In all, it seems like Vivo did thorough research on the competition which includes the likes of Apple iPhone 13, Samsung S21 Plus, and the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. And the Vivo X70 Pro Plus might just turn out to be one of the best if not the best flagship smartphone of the year. 

Vivo X70 Pro Plus India price and availability

Unlike the base version, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus has only one variant with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage and has been priced at Rs 79,990. The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is available in the Enigma Black colour and has an extended camera panel made of glass which Vivo calls Ceramic Cloud Window. The smartphone is available on Vivo's own website as well as Flipkart and offline retail partners. 

Offers include up to Rs 5,000 cashback with a one-time screen replacement and again cashback offers from several banks including ICICI, HDFC, CITI, Kotak, and IDFC First.

Check out the Vivo X70 Pro Plus on Flipkart

12GB + 256GB at Rs 79,990

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Design

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is definitely a looker and comparable to the other flagship smartphones out there. The company decided to not take forward the faux-leather finish on the back panel of the device and has integrated a matte glass finish on the back with a complementing texture on the metal frame. 

The phone has a distinct premium feel to it but the back panel does seem slippery and risky to use with one hand. But the back panel seems tough and does a good job rejecting fingerprints which makes it ideal for use without a phone cover. The Enigma Black colour has a certain glittery effect to it which can be noticed if held against the light. 

The rear panel also features the large camera module which has an extended reflective portion next to it which Vivo calls a Ceramic Cloud Window and is basically a visual element. The camera module creates quite a bump and ensures that the phone will always be wobbly on a hard surface. 

On the front, it features a 6.7-inch WQHD E5 AMOLED 3D curved display which melds into the metal frames on the side. The mobile phone features the tiniest bit of bezels on the top and the chin. The top has a thin earpiece along with a punch-hole camera. 

The top panel of the device has a reflective surface which has some branding along with the IR blaster and the microphone hole. While the bottom panel has the dual-SIM tray along with another microphone hole, the USB-C port and the speaker grille. The power button and the volume rocker are on the right-hand panel of the device. 

The phone is quite slim at just 8.89mm but the camera bump seems to make things a little awkward. The phone weighs 213grams which is pretty standard when it comes to flagships but it still makes for a rather heavy smartphone. It also has an IP68 rating and the smartphone held up well when taking some photos at the pool. 

Display

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus has one of the brightest displays on any smartphone out there at 1,500 nits peak brightness. This means the 6.7-inch WQHD E5 AMOLED 3D curved display gets bright enough outdoors during the day to keep things legible even at 75% of its max brightness. 

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus display features a 120Hz refresh rate, with 3,200 x 1,440 pixels resolution, LTPO technology, 300Hz touch response rate, HDR 10 Plus certification SGS Eye care technology and 10-bit colour depth with 1.07 billion colour support. These features make it one of the best displays out there. 

The resolution on the display is higher than most of the other flagships which mean that the images produced on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus is crisper than the rest. Besides that the colour reproduction and vibrance of the display is top-notch. Movies and films on the display with the HDR10 Plus technology seem as realistic as can be. 

And the 120Hz refresh rate does the job well in making the experience of exploring the smartphone butter smooth. This is a boon for gamers with more and more games supporting higher refresh rates. Those that have not used a smartphone with a 120Hz refresh rate display will notice the difference as clear as day. 

The in-display fingerprint scanner technology has come a long way and is now miles ahead of what it was a couple of years back. And the Vivo X70 Pro Plus seems to take full advantage of that. 

Performance

With specs like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset, 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and Extended RAM 2.0 on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus. Compared to the Snapdragon 888 the Plus variant has a higher 3GHz clock speed and a faster Hexagon 780 AI Engine. 

This means it is capable of doing anything that any of the other flagship smartphones out there can and it does. These internals support some of the best camera tech on smartphones yet and makes playing games a treat. 

While this isn't really marketed as a gaming smartphone the Vivo X70 Pro Plus does come with a lot of features that make it ideal for it. It has a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate display with some powerful internals which ensures games like BGMI, Free Fire Max, Genshin Impact run perfectly well. 

We tried gaming on the smartphone for an hour at a time without it declining in performance even the slightest. But after about 30 mins the smartphone did heat up a little which was nowhere enough to cause discomfort and seemed to stay that way without increasing. 

On the software end, it comes with a Funtouch OS on top of Android 11 which is probably the only thing about the smartphone which I felt could be slightly improved. After starting to use the smartphone one of the most annoying bits was a recurring notification about how my SIM card message memory was full despite me not using my SIM memory at all. This issue was later fixed in an update though. 

But besides that, the experience of FunTouch OS was rather smooth with cool transitions and features like an informative gallery app. Although the Vivo X70 Pro Plus is as premium as the premium gets, it comes with some bloatware installed which Vivo says is eliminating more and more with each generation. To be frank, while these apps seem like bloat on the phone at first glance, Vivo does allow these to be removed under the discretion of the user. 

Camera

Onto what is the most exciting part about the Vivo X70 Pro Plus, let us do away with the camera specifications first. The device comes with a quad-camera system on the back with a 50MP primary camera featuring a GN1 sensor, a 48MP ultra-wide Gimbal sensor, a 12MP for portrait shots, and an 8MP periscope camera with 60x Hyper zoom. On the front, it has a 32MP camera sensor for selfies and video calling.

While all the lenses come with optical image stabilisation (OIS), only the 48MP ultra-wide lens features a gimbal setup which enables the smartphone to take some super steady shots. All the camera systems like we mentioned before is handled by the V1 Professional Imaging Chip. This is an all-around chip that not only intelligently helps with frame interpolation, but also makes frames steady while gaming. There's the Zeiss T* coating on the rear lens cover which makes sure that glare, lens flare, ghosting in low-light photos can be avoided and it works like a charm. 

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We need not even mention that the photos taken in well lit conditions come out with top notch clarity and crisp framing. The colour reproduction is accurate to the shade and Vivo does a great job balancing out the textures, brightness and intensity of the colours and lines in photos with and without the Zeiss colour mode switched on. 

But the ultra-wide photos did have barrel distortion at the edges with people appearing wider than they really are. This ultra-wide camera is also used to click macro shots which are quite detailed to say the least with on point focus. 

While Vivo only allows users to zoom up to 60x on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus, it produces photos that are quite devoid of noise given that they have plenty of light in the environment. 

Speaking of light and environment, the night shots on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus with the Pure Night View mode are quite accurate and sometimes appear better than the eye can see. Selfies are crisp and accurate in colour with come excellent bokeh in the portrait mode. The Zeiss style Biotar, Sonnar Planar, and Distagon bokeh portrait effects produce distinctly different styles of images which suit quite a different situations. In fact, some of the portrait style images came out so well one of my colleagues thought it was clicked on a DSLR.

On to videos, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus cameras produce some of the most colour correct and white balanced videos I have seen on smartphones. While there are three different stabilization modes in video, the Horizontal Line mode is nothing short of magic. This mode ensures the video is stable and upright even if the smartphone is turned around a full 360 degrees which is something that needs to be seen to be believed. 

Daylight videos come out with superb quality but the Super Night mode has inconsistent performance. One thing which seems like a possible point of contention is that the stabilisation is not present in videos beyond 1080p 30fps. 

Battery

The battery is a strong point for the Vivo X70 Pro Plus again and this could be in the running for the top spot for battery life. It comes with a 4500mAh battery with 50W wireless charging support and a 55W FlashCharge adapter in the box and also features fast wireless charging. The smartphone to start with charges super quick. From 5% to 100 it can charge is just over 35 mins which is quite a feat. 

And the battery lasted me a day and a half (around 31 hours) on average with extensive use. And by extensive use, I mean at least 5 hours of screen time with gaming, social media, videos texting, and checking different things on the internet. I could not test the wireless charging to the fullest capacity since my wireless charger supported only up to 18W.

Should I buy the Vivo X70 Pro Plus?

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