The flagship, originally, is the ship (the maritime kind) that carries the fleet's commander. In the smartphone world, the term has become synonymous with the best phone a phone company currently offers. Flagship is the most coveted by users and it gets the most attention from the media. Flagship is the phone you want.
But ever since Apple first put a $1,000 price tag on its flagship phone, things have started to change.
Flagships are still the best phones around, but they're hardly the best value. And the discrepancy sometimes goes so far that it's getting hard to recommend a flagship phone when there are cheaper alternatives that are nearly as good.
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Enter the latest phone from China's smartphone maker Vivo: the V15Pro. It's a huge phone with zero notches, and specs that kick the ass of any flagship you can think of. Its sole downside, on paper, is a Snapdragon 675 chip that places it into mid-range category. So I've gotten a hold of a V15Pro unit to see how this combination works.
The specs on the V15Pro are a testament to just how much the smartphone industry has progressed in recent years. It's an "affordable" phone (Vivo's words) that has a 6.39-inch, AMOLED screen with no notch (the selfie camera shows up when needed via a pop-up mechanism on top of the phone) and just a tiny chin on the bottom. It comes with 6/8GB of RAM (the latter in selected markets only), 128GB of storage and an under-the-display fingerprint scanner.
It's got a triple rear camera, comprised of a 48-megapixel main sensor, an 8-megapixel wide angle camera, and a 5-megapixel depth camera. The pop-up selfie camera has a 32-megapixel sensor. The battery has a not-too-impressive capacity of 3,700mAh, but it makes up for it with Vivo's ultra-fast charging tech. A lot of these features were rumored for Apple and Samsung flagships years ago, and they still haven't arrived -- and yet, the Vivo has them all.
New Settings menu, please
A list of specs is one thing, and how it all performs in practice is another. I've had the V15Pro a little shorter than I would've liked to, but in my time with it it performed admirably. The Snapdragon chip that powers it isn't the best Qualcomm has to offer, but you'd never notice it in real-life usage -- and I bet the 6GB of RAM helps with that, too.
Battery life was great -- two days of intensive usage was typical -- and it charges really fast, but only if you use Vivo's charger. These days, I charge so many devices that I have a single charger/powerbank for all of them, so I didn't get that benefit.
My qualms with the V15Pro aren't with its raw performance, but rather its UI and the tiny glitches that stem from all the super-fresh tech the phone has. One thing that wound me up is the enormous number of settings, which appear to be group rather arbitrarily within the Settings menu. Each smartphone maker has its own way of doing this, but for some reason, I constantly struggled to find the right setting on the Vivo.
The fingerprint scanner worked better than any under-the-display scanner I've used, but it still wasn't perfect. If I hit it just right, it'd work on the first try; often, I'd have to reposition my digit a bit, or press a little harder, to unlock the phone. The V15Pro, mercifully, also offers face unlocking, which worked a little better. That, however, requires the selfie camera to pop up every time you unlock the phone, and it was just a tiny bit slow for me.
There are other minor drawbacks. For example, the phone uses a micro-USB connector instead of USB-C, which is pretty odd these days. It also comes with a free case, which would be a nice touch if the case weren't so damn ugly. On the flip side, the case is pretty rugged and probably offers better protection than your typical plastic case. Note that the V15Pro isn't waterproof (I guess that Vivo had to save money somewhere), which might be the reason why the case is so rugged.
Almost a looker
The V15Pro is a bit of an odd bird. With that huge, beautiful screen, and all its gadgets (the pop-up camera, the fingerprint scanner that lights up in bright blue when you touch the screen), it should be a very attractive phone. Some details just don't work, though. The triple camera setup on the back is placed on a pretty thick, black strip of plastic which calls to mind the ultra-slim standalone cameras of the naughties. The gradient blue background isn't as nicely done as on some of Huawei's phones, for example. The corners of the phone don't really follow the curve of the screen. None of these are deal-breakers, but overall, this is not a phone that will make you want to throw your iPhone away.
On the bright side, the phone is very well built; it feels sturdy and solid in the hand, and the pop-up mechanism for the selfie camera doesn't look like something that will break any time soon.
With the notch gone, the V15Pro is nothing but a huge, crisp, AMOLED display on the front, and, like most smartphone OLEDs these days, the display doesn't disappoint. It's not as bright as the one on the iPhone X and there's a fair amount of color shifting when you look at it from an angle, but the blacks are deep and the image is crisp.
Flagship-level camera
In my previous experience with Vivo phones, the selfie camera was great and the rear cameras were pretty good but not the best around. The V15Pro is not very different, but its camera setup will occasionally produce truly stunning photos.
For example, in broad daylight you can set the camera to take 48-megapixel photos and they will turn out pretty great. Similarly, the ultra-wide, 8-megapixel sensor will let you take that group photo with ease -- I've tested similar setups on many phone and I end up using the widescreen camera nearly as much as I use the main one.
The selfies are, unsurprisingly, incredibly crisp. And even the bokeh mode has improved from Vivo's earlier models. For best results (as always), turn off the AI-assisted beautifier and just take standard photos.
Both the main and the selfie cameras often struggle in poor lighting conditions. Sometimes, an indoors shot will end up being too yellow. Sometimes it'll be too red. I've tested the V15Pro against the iPhone X's camera and while the iPhone isn't perfect either, it's at least consistently yellowish in dark conditions.
That's not nearly all. The Vivo V15Pro's cameras basically mirror every feature you'll find on a flagship these days, including Huawei-like night mode and iPhone-like live photo as well as portrait light mode. I didn't have the device long enough to thoroughly test every feature, but it's nice to know they're there.
Overall, the V15Pro is not the best cameraphone you'll find but it does offer a pretty amazing set of features -- I don't think that any other phone currently has a 48-megapixel rear camera paired with a 32-megapixel selfie, pop-up camera. You may have to tweak a setting or two (the rear camera has a "pro" mode for fine tuning), but you should be able to take beautiful photos with this phone.
If the price is right...
Vivo could not tell me the price (except to say that it will vary by region), and the price is a key component of this phone. Given a low-enough price point, the V15Pro could be pretty awesome, as it matches (and sometimes surpasses) many expensive competitors on specs, features and performance. Unfortunately, I'll have to reserve my final judgment until I know how much this phone will cost. For reference, the phone that currently sits on Vivo's V line of devices, the V11, cost roughly $266; if the V15Pro is in that ballpark, that would be a pretty great deal.
UPDATE: Feb. 21, 2019, 2:40 p.m. CET The pricing for the Vivo V15Pro in India was revealed to be $407 for the 6GB model, which is acceptable but still far more expensive than, say, Xiaomi's offerings in the same, mid-range bracket.
The V15Pro will be available in multiple markets, though exact launch dates are still not publicly available.
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