Vivo V23 Pro | Serious Pixel 5a camera phone rival
so not only have i been using the vivo v23 pro as my full-time smartphone for over a week now i actually took it out to iceland for a few days where the beer is surprisingly delicious and the whiskey is perhaps unsurprisingly about as smooth as a badger's taint and when i was out there i fully engaged tourist mode in order to thoroughly test one of the best features on the vivo v23 pro that 108 megapixel rear camera as.
well as the 50 megapixel dual selfie shooter so here's my in-depth vivo v23 pro first up i've got to say i love the skinny and light design of the v23 pro it is impressively thin and lightweight to the point where occasionally i'd be like is it even in my pocket anymore
which led to regular frantic fumbles and not the good kind we're not quite talking motorola moto edge 20 here but it's not far off at all that back end feels absolutely fantastic when you are clutching the phone as well it's constructed from a textured fluorite ag glass so it doesn't support the usual super smooth finish you find on a lot of modern smartphones the aesthetics are very smart indeed i could comfortably
confuse the vivo v23 pro for something that's twice the price rather than just a mid-range mobile i'd rather enjoy the color morphing effect on this sunshine gold model as well sometimes it's kind
of a dusky yellow and other times it's more like aquamarine very funky indeed my only real complaint as far as the design goes here on the vivo v23 pro is that you don't get any dedicated water
resistance but to be fair while i was in iceland for those few days this thing got absolutely pelted by various hail storms and rainstorms no complaints whatsoever even though it was probably cold enough to freeze a polar bear's butt so yeah even if you live in the northeast england it'll probably be absolutely fine now moving on to
software what you got here is fun touch os 12 sat on top of android 12 and like many launchers these days this allows you to get close to a stock android vibe while also adding in plenty of decent bonus features so for instance dive into the settings and you'll discover a
respectable amount of customization in there especially when it comes to the various launcher animations which on the
whole are fluid and rather pleasing to the peepers you've also got a one-handed mod thank god as well because the vivo v23 pro is a bit on the big side and yet the one-handed board is rather awkward
to activate but it definitely does the job there's plenty of gesture shortcuts.
to open up your favorite apps you can also shake the vivo v23 pro to turn on that torch although you can furiously pump it as much as you like but it won't turn off again and it's also great to see that vivo doesn't load its smartphones with all kinds of crap wear which some manufacturers like some xiaomi for instance are definitely guilty of on here you will find a few little bits but they're generally an offensive and some of them are actually quite useful it's definitely good that vivo doesn't load this thing with all kinds of apps that you can't delete because you've got a choice for either 128 or 256 gigs of storage plenty of space you would think but there's no expandability via micro sd and overall i'm going to say i did enjoy the fun touch experience sort of speaker though there were a couple of little bugs here and there so for instance one day i did notice when i was trying to type out an email the keyboard was really sluggish and unresponsive to the point where i tap a key and it would take a good two or three seconds for it to actually pop up on the screen i did try shutting down various apps and services i rebooted the phone nothing seemed to work and then the problem just magically corrected itself about an hour later i also noticed a problem when i was streaming video on the likes of netflix or disney plus uh where sometimes i would start up a show or a movie and for the first
minute i saw the performance was a little bit judgy occasionally there'd be little frame uh skips and things like that generally only happened for about a minute or so and then tempered itself that was absolutely fine again but quite awkward and annoying for that minute but anyway if you're intrigued and you want a bit more of a proper tour of a fun touch we'll definitely go check out my full in-depth vivo v23 pro unboxing where i also compare it with its cheaper
sibling the vivo v23 now i was definitely a fan of that in-display
fingerprint sensor as well on the whole quite dependable although if my fingers were quite moist or grubby then all of a sudden yeah it did feel more often than not so let's have a chefs here that 6.56
inch amoled display now this just curves ever so gently around the edges but thankfully i had absolutely no issues with palm intrusion and the general responsiveness of the screen even when i was clutching it quite tight the visuals are typically strong you got full hd
plus resolution here with full hdr 10 plus supports you've got a nice sharp contrast well that color output is fully customizable as well you can temper it down or you can have it really slap you in the fears bright and vibrant yes you do have a wide body notch stuck away up
top which intrudes on your full screen shenanigans but this is not quite as ridiculous a mustache notch like on those iphones you've still got plenty of room for notification icons and the rest of that the auto brightness was generally dependable here on the vivo v23 pro as well there were a couple of moments where i went a little bit darker than i could have possibly needed to have to manually tweak the brightness instead but overall not bad at all and on that peak brightness you'll have absolutely no trouble seeing what's going on even in bright deer don't bite me a little you vicious get not giving you enough.
strokes on my map sorry and as for the refresh vehicle i can dynamically switch on the vivo v23 pro between 60 to 90 hertz and at that 90 hertz level it is a lovely silky smooth experience the audio
chops unfortunately aren't quite as impressive it's a mono speaker setup and it's a bit crap to be perfectly honest you've got no headphone jack on here either just like with a lot of flagship smartphones but at least the bluetooth 5.2 connectivity works like a charm that's for the performance here on the vivo v23 pro well it's powered by mediatex diamond city 1200 chipset just
like the oneplus nord 2 and that's backed by a very generous 12 gigs of ram i did see the occasional little judder again here and there just in everyday run and sometimes the animations weren't quite as smooth just for a moment but generally that was when i had lots of
apps on the go at once and certainly if you want to do a good bit of gaming well nora is on that phone like the gentian impact run absolutely fine even if you try to boost the the detail settings a
little bit you've got a dedicated gaming mode which can have you to block notifications you've also got a dedicated performance mode on there just to make sure that your game gets all the resources it needs and i found that even if i wanted to play against him back for
a good hour or so well generally the vivo v23 pro didn't run too hot it
absolutely managed to cope with it just fine and of course like pretty much every smartphone around this sort of price point these days you've got full 5g support it's actually 5g support across both sim slots as well if you do want to pack two sims in there at once
as for the battery tech well it's a 4 300 milliamp cell stuffed inside of the vivo v23 pro not as big as some rivals but it absolutely did the job perfectly i found that even on the busiest longest days with lots of intensive views i'm talking a lot of camera play lots of video recording all of that good stuff i still ended up with around 10 to 15
at the end of that day and on those days where i took it a bit easier just you know your general messaging web browsing all of that sort of good stuff i.
generally ended up with around 40 to 50 percent battery at the end of that day so you could happily have this thing last an entire weekend if you you know didn't go crazy and when you're all
running low on juice you've got 44 watts recharging speeds here as long as you've got a cable unfortunately there's no wireless charging support on here now one of the big whoops with the vivo v23
pro is that 108 megapixel primary camera sensor which is a bit of a stun app for capturing everyday snaps and horn movies you don't end up with massive 108 meg picks as the v23 uses nine in one pixel
binning to produce 12 megapixel results and that is more than enough detail for a crisp good-looking image when you check them out on a tellurium monitor i found that my test shots with this
camera boasted some impressive color reproduction so photos do actually look natural as long as the lighting isn't terrible even indoor snaps look close to what you'll see in real life with the occasional bulky skin tones moving subjects are often cleanly captured
although i did get some blur when snapping in more ambient light so you will need a steady hand and an even steadier subject and i really like the portrait modes fake bokeh style effect which can be tinkered within the settings hdr situations are generally well handled too and they'll come nighttime i did see some considerable grain creeping in at times even with that night mode active an alternative 8 megapixel ultra wide angle shooter can be swapped to at any point if you can't
quite fit everything into frame although this suffers from the usual ultra wide angle tropes pumping out darker shots with a distinctive loss of color accuracy but if you've got a well-lit scenario it works fine it's just a shame that it's a compromise as usual and the
final lens on this triple lens rear shooter is your bog standard basic 2
megapixel macro effort pretty standard fare so home movies and video can be shot at up to 4k resolution at either 30 frames per second or 60 if you fancy a smoother more natural result some kind
of wind filter would have definitely helped my outdoor iceland clips as my expert commentary on the natural land formations was almost entirely obliterated by all those gusty shenanigans but the picture quality is strong and stabilization is only a little bit juddery when you're moving and shooting at the same time you also have a special
night mode when you're shooting video in darker conditions if that's your bag another highlight is the 50 megapixel dual selfie cam up front which comes packing full auto focus to keep you nice
and crisp and again the results are strong as long as you don't shoot
against strong light in which case your picks may appear rather washed out still the dual tone spotlight feature can illuminate your face in the dark with a combination of two bright leds and a
bright white screen and this works really well for shooting a late night selfie with other junk going on in the background you could also shoot a bit of 4k video using that front-facing camera
setup as well which is perfectly fine for a bit of professional style of
vlogging although albeit with the usual audio capture issues.
so if you're outdoors you'll want to definitely speak up quite a bit so right there's my full final frank vivo v23 pro smartphone review and i gotta say i did enjoy using it as my full-time handset despite the fact there are a couple of little issues lurking in there but certainly the highlight here is that camera attack especially if you're a selfie aficionado so if you're looking for something to take on the likes the
pixel 4a and the 5a at that mid-range price point we'll definitely give it a squint so what do you reckon and are you tempted to be great to your thoughts down in the comments below as i say i've done a full unboxing and comparison with the standard v23 as well if you fancy
maybe shaving a bit extra off the price? Thank YOu