Vivo V23 Pro 5G

Vivo is no mystery to oddly designed phones, but with the V23 Pro 5G, the company has outdone itself. From a distance, the device appears to be a standard Android phone, with a sleek frame that holds the phone's curvy display and glides back together. However, up close, you'll notice that the phone's shimmery back begins to change color the moment sunlight irks its surface.

Source :Vivo v23 Pro 5G

In particular, Vivo used Fluorite AG glass in the design of the V23 Pro, which reacts to UV rays and changes the exposed bits of the phone's otherwise golden color back to a teal/blue-ish hue. The color-changing effect is as one-of-a-kind as it is captivating, and you'll be hard-pressed to find another phone with a similar design trait on the market.

The Vivo V23 Pro has a triple camera array on the back, which encompasses a 108MP Samsung sensor, an 8MP OmniVision UW sensor, and a 2MP macro sensor. For selfies, the device includes a 50MP main selfie shooter, as well as an additional 8MP lens for wide-angle selfies or group selfies.

Having used the company's X-series of phones, I had high hopes for the V23 Pro's camera as well. Unfortunately, photos taken with the phone's primary sensor leave something to be desired. In fact, if you look through the gallery attached below, you'll notice that the images taken during the day have poor detail. The same can be seen in the image with the blue generator grid, where the tree on the left-hand side of the frame appears to be straight out of a watercolor painting. The leaves, in particular, lack texture, and the flower pots in the lower right corner appear mushy as well. Fortunately, the sensor's color science isn't too extreme, and the scenes are usually rendered accurately.

On the plus side, the smartphone's 50MP selfie camera takes stunning selfies. Now, I usually turn off all the custom features, but if you want to post a flawless self-portrait on social media, the phone has a treasure trove of beautification features that may come in handy. Furthermore, the phone includes a one-of-a-kind dual-flash array above the selfie camera module, which significantly improves the quality of low-light selfies.

The Vivo V23 Pro features a 6.56-inch FHD+ curved AMOLED display. The panel has a refresh rate of 90Hz, which isn't the fastest even by last year's standards, but it's still a step up from devices with 60Hz displays. If you've never been a fan of phones with curved screens, the V23 Pro is unlikely to change your mind. To that end, the phone's display, while beautiful, suffers from poor palm rejection. Furthermore, the panel comes with a rather large notch on top, which takes some getting used to.

The screen has a high maximum brightness of 800 nits, allowing you to use the phone outside without squinting. Furthermore, the device has excellent viewing angles, and we didn't notice any erratic backlit bleeding around the curved edges of the display. The device supports HD playback from OTT services like Prime Video.

Devices powered by MediaTek's Density 9000 SoC are on the way, but Vivo has stuck with the tried-and-true Dimensity 1200 processor for its latest contender. To wit, the Density 1200 was one of the most VFM SoCs of 2021, and the chipset continues to impress, achieving outstanding results in synthetic benchmarking apps. To give you a better idea, the phone received 6,57,442 points in Antutu and 553 and 2,506 points in GeekBench's single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.

Furthermore, the device handled multitasking well, thanks to its quick UFS 3.1 storage and LPDDR4x memory, which significantly reduced load times when switching between apps. Not only that, but the smartphone could also run graphically demanding games at competitive settings. In fact, we were able to max out the graphics and frame rate settings in PUBG: New State. Furthermore, BGMI performed flawlessly at the HDR graphics and Ultra FPS presets. To achieve 60fps in the game, you must now reduce the settings to the 'Smooth' preset. Despite this, we didn't notice any significant frame drops during intense gun battles.

The V23 Pro is powered by a 4,300mAh battery, which unfortunately did not last until the end of a long workday. Fortunately, the smartphone comes with a fast 44W charger that charges the device in just under an hour (55 minutes, to be precise).