Vivo V30 Review in Five Minutes: A Perfect Blend of Style and Substance

Vivo V30 Review in Five Minutes: During our initial impressions of the Vivo V30, we'll find out if it have what it takes to cut it in India's highly competitive sub-35K smartphone market.

Vivo has officially dropped two new smartphones in its V series. The Vivo V30 and V30 Pro arrive with some solid upgrades over their predecessors. However, our focus today is on the Vivo V30.

With a starting price of Rs 33,999 for the 8/128GB variant, the Vivo V30 is positioned in a highly competitive market. Before we dive into the Vivo V30 first impressions, here are our picks for the best smartphones under Rs 40,000 in India. So here are our thoughts about the Vivo V30 after using it for a week.

Design and Build

As with past generations, the Vivo V30 puts the emphasis on style opting for a sleek design with a color changing back panel. The phone features a 3D curved screen and a curved back panel. The camera bump, which barely protrudes, blends perfectly into the rear panel, giving the phone a subtly stylish look.

Our version of the Vivo V30 came in the Peacock Green shade, which combines green and blue together with a visually appealing textured pattern. To add an extra layer of flare, the green turns into vibrant blue shade when exposed to UV light. As compared to the design, the build doesn't feel that premium.

Yes, the phone gets glass protection on both the front and back, although the Vivo V30 uses a glossy plastic frame. However, this doesn't add any heft to the handset, leading the Vivo V30 to weigh a meager 186 grams and measure just 7.45mm thick, despite housing a massive 5,000 mAh battery. Lastly, the phone has an IP54 rating for resistance to mild splashes of water and dust.

The Vivo V30 also features a volume and power button on the right, while the speaker grille, SIM tray, and USB Type-C port sit at the bottom. Our model opts for a matte finish on the back that's quite resistant to fingerprints and smudges. In the box, there's a charger, transparent case, and SIM extractor tool.

Display

For the display, the Vivo V30 sports a 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED 3D Curved screen with a peak brightness of 2,800 nits and a pixel density of 452 PPI. The panel also features a 120Hz refresh rate and a 300Hz touch sampling rate. The display also supports 100% DCI-P3 and 105% NTSC color gamut coverage.

Overall, the display on the Vivo V30 is excellent for entertainment with good viewing angles and color reproduction. The panel also gets plenty bright and is easily visible outdoors, even under direct sunlight. It also features 2160Hz PWM Dimming and SGS Low Blue Light certification.

Performance

The Vivo V30 also debuts as the first smartphone in India to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset. Our model of the Vivo V30 arrived with 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Let's take a look at some real-world results. In Geekbench 6, the chip managed a single-core score of 1160 points and a multi-core score of 3203 points.

The phone also scored 3556 points in Geekbench 6's OpenCL GPU test. We also ran Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends on high settings on the Vivo V30. And after 30 minutes of playback, we didn't experience any slowdowns or major drops in frame rates. This might be down to the 3002mm2 vapor chamber and Vivo's software-based Ultra Game Mode.

Cameras

In terms of optics, the Vivo V30 features a 50 MP 'VCS True Color' primary camera sensor with OIS and a 50 MP ultrawide lens with a 119-degree Field of View with Autofocus. Up front, there's a 50 MP selfie camera with Auto Focus. Here are our initial thoughts about camera performance on the Vivo V30.

In daylight, the main camera captures a ton of detail with vibrant colors, although this makes shots look oversaturated at times. The high-res 50 MP ultrawide lens maintains color consistency with the main camera. The new 50 MP ultrawide also has minimal distortion on the edges and outputs detailed shots.

The Vivo V30 also impressed in low light as night mode brings in more light in the scene, while improving the detail. Objects in the darker areas of the scene are also well exposed. Even in the absence of ambient light, the Vivo V30 still churns out good shots. Here are a couple of sample shots.

Quality does dip when switching to the ultrawide lens at night, but results are usable so long as you have sufficient ambient light in the vicinity. The Aura Light that sits under the camera island does a good job evenly distributing light for portrait shots. The selfie camera is quick to focus on subjects and captures detailed shots with accurate skin tones in daylight.

The Vivo V30's main camera can record 4K video at 30fps or 1080p video at up to 60fps. However, the ultrawide lens is limited to 1080p video recording at 30fps. On the flip side, the selfie camera can also capture 4K video recording at 30fps. Stay tuned for our in-depth camera review of the Vivo V30.

Battery, Software

Vivo has equipped the V30 with a large 5,000 mAh battery that can easily last a day on a full charge under moderate to heavy usage. The battery also supports 80W fast charging support with an adapter included in the box. Vivo claims that despite the super-fast charging, the Vivo V30 offers double the battery lifespan as a traditional smartphone.

On the software front, the Vivo V30 runs Android 14 out of the box with Funtouch OS 14 on top. Vivo promises years of Android OS updates and years of regular security updates with the V30.
The software on the V30 is relatively clean and light, Vivo has minimized the bloatware and you don't get bombarded with ads any more. Stay tuned for our full Vivo V30 review for a deep dive into the phone's software.

Vivo V30 First Impressions: Conclusion

So should you buy the Vivo V30? While we still need some time to dive into all the aspects of the Vivo V30, our initial impressions of the handset were positive. Not only does the Vivo V30 offer solid upgrades over its predecessor, but the upgrades are targeted towards improving the overall smartphone experience.

The software has gotten a lot better and is now lighter than ever. The chipset has also got a nice upgrade, while battery capacity has increased. Vivo have also made software and hardware tweaks to improve battery lifespan. Then there's the display, which has gotten brighter.

The cameras have also gotten better as the decision to opt for dual 50 MP sensors as opposed to unwanted low-res sensors is a step in the right direction. And we don't see Vivo sticking to tradition with the design a bad thing, although it isn't the most comfortable to grip. For a starting price of Rs 33,999, we believe the Vivo V30 is definitely worth consideration. Stay tuned to Gizbot for our full Vivo V30 review.