vivo V5 Plus review: iPhone impersonator, bokeh king

Introduction

How many front cameras is too many? Certainly not two - two is just right, vivo says, and ushers in the V5 Plus. And not just any two - a 20MP primary shooter, and another 8MP one for depth of field effects. There's also a 16MP rear shooter (we won't be calling it 'primary' anymore), bringing total on-board megapixel count to 44.

Wait, back up a little there, you said vivo, and all I'm seeing is an iPhone with a vivo badge on the back? Indeed, the V5 Plus carries more than a passing resemblance to Apple's latest, antenna bands and all, and you'd need to be super naive to think it's a coincidence.

Underneath the iPhone-like shell, the Snapdragon 625 ticks, and it's a top-class chipset... for the midrange phone that is the V5 Plus. You won't be strapped for storage (64GB) or RAM (4GB) either, and the rear 16MP camera also shoots 4K video. What else could you ask for?

vivo V5 Plus key features

• 5.5-inch IPS LCD of 1,080 x 1,920 resolution; 401ppi; Gorilla Glass 5
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset; 14nm fabrication process; octa-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU; Adreno 506 GPU; 4GB of RAM
• 64GB of built-in memory
• Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, Funtouch OS 3.0 on top
• 16MP rear camera; 26mm-equiv. f/2.0 lens; single LED flash
• 20MP+8MP front camera; 26mm-equiv. f/2.0 lens; single LED flash
• 2160p video capture @ 30fps
• Home button with fingerprint scanner
• Dual nano SIM slots; Cat. 13/7 LTE support; 802.11 a/g/b/n/ac; Bluetooth 4.0; GPS
• 3,160mAh battery

Main shortcomings

• Quite pricey
• No microSD slot
• No FM radio and NFC
• Constantly having to explain it's not an iPhone

Well, you could ask for a microSD slot to expand those otherwise roomy 64 gigs, and the lack of NFC and particularly FM radio is surely going to be an issue to some potential buyers. What's going to bother all of them, however, is the price - at more than $400 the V5 Plus is a pretty tough sell in a world of Redmi Notes going for less than half that.

vivo V5 Plus press images

It's a premium brand though, vivo, and a price premium is to be expected. Plus, name the other phone that has a couple of selfie cameras that can produce depth of field effects. It certainly isn't one of those Redmi Notes. We'll get to the camera eventually, but let's start the usual way - hardware overview is on the next page.