Just like its bigger sibling, the v7 has a plastic body, which is a little disappointing considering that most phones in this price range and below now support at least a metal back. Even so, the v& looks sleek and is quite lightweight. The phone also looks pretty nice thanks to the chrome trim around the display and antenna lines at the back. Button placement is good and SIM tray has separate slots for two SIM cards and micro SD card. Which is also the good fingerprint sensor works well too and you can use it to lock apps.

Viewers used a 5.7inch IPS panel with an 18:9 aspect ratio so it’s taller and its up most of the space on the front. Boarders are pretty slim all around. The resolution is only HD though so icons and don’t look very sharp but colors and viewing angles are good. The phones use the same Snapdragon 450 mobile platform as the V7 plus and you get 4GB of RAM but less storage at 32GB.

Vivo sticking with this Funtouch OS which is now based on android 7.1.2. However, the customization seems to have resulted in some native Android features such as a battery usage graph and split screen mode being dropped for the latter you will have to deal with Vivo’s own smart split feature, which only works with the handful of apps. There are plenty of pre-installed apps but you can get rid of most of them if not needed. Funtouch OS also has a slight learning curve to it and hasn’t really changed much over the years which makes it feel a bit dated.

The Vivo v7 also has face recognition security which works well under good lighting but not so much in low-light. The Vivo v7 works well for everyday usage most social and web apps run without a hitch and games run fairly as well. As the HD display doesn’t really stress the GPU too much. The interface also feels quick and we didn’t really encounter any lag. Videos are rendered well and Full HD videos look good the speaker doesn’t get too loud for media files but with good aftermarket headphones, audio performance is good.

The front 24MP camera is the main highlight of this phone and it does a good job of capturing details selfies. There is minimal shutter lag so you can get clear selfies even when you are moving about. There’s also a fill light in the front which works well, you get a beautification mode and a group selfie feature too. The rear 16MP sensor does a decent job at landscapes and macros. Distant objects tend to suffer a bit and low-light shots end up looking a bit soft but overall they are not too bad. Video recording tops are 1080p but there’s no continuous autofocus here which is quite annoying. Battery life is also good and despite the slight reduction in capacity compared to the v7 glass. We still managed to get a full day’s worth of usage.

Vivo V7 detailed specifications

The Vivo v7 is good for selfies but the overall feature set isn’t as competitive as Oppo is offering. We are mainly talking about the plastic body and the HD display both of which feel like big compromisers unless the Vivo v7 drops in price. We think you’d be better off with the Oppo F5 or even the Moto X4 at this price.