Vivo V11 Pro Review: Is the future here? Let's find out

Vivo recently launched a mid-range smartphone Vivo V11 Pro in India. It brings a lot of new technologies, you might call reserved for high-end smartphones like an in-display fingerprint, water drop notch and much more. But, is all this enough to make it your daily driver? Find out in our full review of Vivo V11 Pro below:

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Specifications

Vivo V11 Pro sports a 6.41-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080x2340 pixels. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC coupled with Adreno 512 GPU. The dual-SIM handset packs in 6GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage. Storage is further expandable using a microSD card. Under the hood, there is a 3,400mAh battery with support to Vivo’s Super Engine Fast Charging.

Price: Rs. 25,990

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Design

As soon as you take out the Vivo V11 Pro from its box, you will be mesmerised by such design language. The display up front offers quite a lot of real estate, thanks to the all-new water drop style notch. The notch only houses a front-facing camera, while the earpiece sits on top of it. Even the chin is relatively smaller when compared to its competition.

Flipping the phone over reveals the gradient back design. This Starry Night colour looks quite good. The gradient colour is black on top transitioning to a glittery blue on the bottom. On the bottom edge, is a microUSB port, which is a bit disappointing to see considering it is 2018 and USB Type C has become a standard. A speaker grill, 3.5-mm headphone jack and the primary microphone also sit at the bottom edge. While the left edge is clean, the right one sports the power and volume buttons. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone.

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Display

In order to fit in an in-display fingerprint scanner, Vivo had to opt-in for a Super AMOLED panel. AMOLED panels offer deeper blacks and better viewing angles, which are great for media consumption. Though the panel is not as bright and vivid as Samsung ones, it is quite better than IPS LCD panels on smartphones with similar price tags. Minimal bezels and larger screen real estate are just an icing on the cake.

As for in-display fingerprint scanner, the tech does seem to work quite well in most cases. Do keep in mind that this whole unlocking process here is not as fast as on phones with a traditional capacitive fingerprint scanner. During our time with the device, it managed to unlock at least 7 out of 10 times that we tried.

Also Read: OnePlus 6T First Impressions: Changes are incremental but impressive

When you do not want to use your fingerprint or it just fails to detect it for some weird reason, the phone also has face unlock as a backup, which is quite easy to set up. Interestingly, face unlock here uses an infrared sensor, which means the phone won't struggle reading your face under low lighting conditions.

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Performance

Vivo V11 Pro is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor clocked at 1.96GHz. Graphics here are being pumped by Adreno 512 GPU inside. In benchmarks, V11 Pro did manage to get a respectable score of 128760 on AnTuTu. On GeekBench 4, the device secured 1447 for single core and 5376 for multi-core operations.

Just like the numbers, performance in the real world scenarios was quite decent. We were able to play games like PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 8 without any lag or hiccups. Switching between apps was also quite seamless, thanks to its 6GB of RAM. Normal day-to-day tasks like scrolling through a webpage or swapping between multiple social media apps also felt flawless.

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Software and UI

Chinese smartphone manufacturers like Vivo love to put a heavy skin on Google's Android operating system. Based on Android 8.1 Oreo, the Vivo V11 Pro comes with FunTouchOS 4.5. Though the software brings high level of customisations including a built-in theming engine, however, it does lack basic functions like an app drawer.

A few things that I personally didn't like about Vivo's custom UI, include the iOS-like control centre and disorganized settings menu. While Android offers quick settings panel on the notification shade itself, Vivo decides to take another route and put them all on a Control Centre, which can be called by swiping from the bottom of the screen. Additionally, users can also manage all their recent apps via the control centre, which does not have a point as there is a recents key available on the navigation bar itself.

Also Read: Samsung to soon roll out Android 9 Pie for Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Galaxy S9, Galaxy A9

Due to such silly additions, the UI might take some time for users to coming from a stock Android interface. However, if you already use a Vivo phone, the UI has not changed that much over the years, so the transition here should not be a problem.

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Camera

Since Vivo entered the Indian market, they have been focusing on the cameras more than anything else. Vivo V11 Pro comes with a 25-megapixel selfie shooter, which comes with a ton of software-based features. Features for the front-facing camera including AI for beautification, stickers and even portrait lighting effects. It performs quite well and should keep the selfie freaks amongst you quite happy.

On the back, there is a dual-camera setup consisting of a 12-megapixel primary and a 5-megapixel secondary depth sensor. Under good lighting conditions, V11 Pro manages to capture some great shots with a ton of detail and nice bokeh effects. However, under low lighting conditions, the phone does tend to struggle. Due to the lack of OIS, it leads to increased noise in pictures.

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Battery

Vivo V11 Pro is backed by a 3,400mAh battery, which does seem enough on paper. During our period of testing out in the real world, the phone managed to pull off a full day with normal usage consisting of a few phone calls, social media scrolling and some light gaming. When charging it back up, it usually took around 90 minutes to get fully charged, thanks to the bundled 18W fast charger. Notably, the phone did get slightly warm while charging.

Vivo V11 Pro Review: Verdict

At a price of Rs. 25,990, Vivo V11 Pro has got a lot up its sleeves. Sure you can get flagship-grade experience from something like the Poco F1 or Honor Play for a lot less. However, you will be missing on to great cameras, a beautiful design and futuristic tech like an in-display fingerprint scanner.

While Vivo was heading towards the future with an in-display fingerprint scanner and an almost bezel-less display, it took a step back and chose to opt for a microUSB port. The lack of a USB Type C port, that too in 2018, might disappoint a few people out there. However, something more important, which is missing on most phones now, is here, the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Apart from the plastic build and a miserable software, Vivo V11 Pro is a pretty convincing package for its price.