Vivo V9, rumoured to be launching on 27 March, will, in fact, be coming to India on 23 March instead. They’ve rescheduled the event, probably to streamline it with the launch that’s scheduled in Thailand on 22 March.
Speculation about which phone will be coming into the Indian smartphone market next week was quashed by Vivo India. The company has been teasing the market with images of a dual camera phone that has a bezel less display, without explicitly saying that it’s the V9. On 14 March they finally tweeted that it’s definitely the V9.
Your moments deserve, big or small, deserve all the attention they can get. #MadeForMore. Coming soon.Picture Credit: @mehta_manuj pic.twitter.com/Nw1KnbitZ5March 13, 2018
Needless to say, the vertical placement of the rear camera and the notch-display are definitely design elements that have been taken from Apple but the phone seems interesting, nonetheless.
They’ve posted a ‘testing’ page on the official site where the phone is priced at Rs 1. There is only one variant listed so far featuring 2GB RAM and 8GB storage, available in black and gold. The site will also have a cash on delivery option to make things easier.
The phone isn’t available in any other market globally so it’s hard to hypothesise about how much the device will cost. However, a listing of the Vivo V9 on an Indonesian e-commerce site shows the device priced at IDR 4,999,000, which approximately Rs 23,700.
That same listing specifies that the phone will come will a 6-inch FHD+ AMOLED screen running on a Snapdragon 660 chipset, 4GB RAM and 64GB storage powered by a fast charging 3250mAh battery.
The phone’s optics seem particularly interesting with a 24MP wide-angle selfie camera and a 12MP, 8MP dual rear camera. A wide-angle front camera is becoming a trend in flagship phones and taking over the net with background blurred selfies, called the ‘Bokeh’ effect. We’ll have to wait for the launch to determine whether or not Vivo integrates this technology into their selfie camera.
Out-of-the-box, the phone will run on Android 8.0 Oreo layered under the FunTouch 4.0 OS, Vivo’s own operating system.
All in all, seems like a great phone for its price point but with the smartphone market getting more aggressive in India, one never knows how things may play out.
- Another change in launch dates, the LG G7 and G7 Plus launch has been pushed to May.
- Amazon is looking to expand in India and is now curating more regional content for its portals.
- Xiaomi has two new phones on the horizon, the mysterious Berlin and Dipper were spotted on Geekbench.
