Vivo U20 smartphone review: main features, advantages and disadvantages

Color your gray days with Vivo!

Many want to repeat the success of Xiaomi and Oppo, but only a select few succeed. Chinese brand Vivo is an up-and-coming newcomer that is releasing hot budget phones right now with specs that Honor never dreamed of!

Today, our strict and honest review got a fresh release of Vivo U20. Let's find out about its advantages and disadvantages together!

Appearance

Vivo creates smartphones that meet modern standards, although often sinning by completely copying designs or cutouts. So the U20 model turned out to be Xiaomi's tracing paper, which in turn was inspired by Apple products (so to speak, a squared copy), but the fact that the designers copied from the best gives them great advantages.

The appearance of the smartphone meets all the requirements of today.Impressive dimensions - 16 centimeters in length, 8 in width. Standard rectangular shape and plastic, glossy finish. But, despite the attractiveness and cheapness of materials, it is worth lightly swiping over the case, as greasy fingerprints appear in the same second, lowering the gadget from the luxury segment back to the ground.

A small price for Vivo manufacturers in no way means that you can release a crooked pacifier and make a lot of money. On the contrary, the U20 model is free from backlash and creaking. It is comfortable to hold the phone in your hand, but due to the smooth coating, there is a high risk of dropping it, as well as scratching the side edges. Therefore, we recommend that you immediately attend to the purchase of a cover.

Let's get back to design! In the upper left corner of the back side there is a block of 4 cameras, not far from it there is a cutout for a fingerprint. On the side ribs there is an unlock button and a volume rocker. The brand has not forgotten about the frameless screen and the newfangled teardrop-shaped selfie camera. Overall, the company has gone to great lengths to make the $275 phone look at least twice as expensive.

Equipment

Not more than 2 months ago, brands got into the habit of putting a special silicone case for the phone in the kit. Fortunately for buyers, the newcomer Vivo is trying its best to keep up with the trends, so there may well be pleasant surprises in some boxes. The rest of the equipment is standard:

• Card with certificates;
• Charging and adapter;
• Clip for removing sim cards;
• Long USB cord.

You will have to choose from only two colors: rich blue with glossy tints and expensive looking black.

Both colors are quite easily soiled, but the manufacturers did not provide us with any other.

Characteristics

Screen

Without deviating from the traditions of the budget segment, Vivo developers endowed the new product with an IPS LCD matrix (you must agree, it sounds expensive).Undoubtedly adored by stellar cinematographers and editors in Hollywood, but also valued by cost-conscious manufacturers for its low price and exemplary performance that surpasses premium AMOLED in many ways.

First of all, the IPS matrix is ​​good because it produces more saturated, bright colors, and this is especially important for flagships. Also, it wears out and burns out much longer. Of the minuses, the most significant: a faded black color, the appearance of a negative with a strong deviation of the smartphone and fragility.

The last drawback is extremely dangerous for the U20, because at least some kind of protection, not to mention advanced Gorilla Glass, is completely absent.

The display received the highest density of 395 ppi at a resolution of 1080 × 2340. In isolation from the numbers, this means first-class quality, which is not gained by all gadgets for 20-30 thousand rubles. Diagonal - 6.5 inches. The screen occupied 85% of the total area. Imagine you are literally buying a mini-cinema! And watching movies with Vivo U20 is a pleasure. The characteristics of brightness and endurance go far beyond the average price category.

Operating system

The flagship works under the strict supervision of the advanced, though not the latest, Android 9.0 (Pie) operating system. Many people dream of repeating or at least approaching its functionality. It implements a convenient system of gestures and prediction, a reliable system of passwords, accounts. Users note a change in colors and an improvement in the reading mode. Much attention in the new version is paid to widget bugs, application loading speed, as well as the smooth transition between them. In general, a smartphone based on it began to hang less. The autonomy of the flagship has increased by 10% due to adaptive brightness.The "adaptive battery" function of the same name will carefully monitor the activity of applications in the background.

The Vivo U20 models, in turn, are lucky to be among the lucky ones who are equipped with the author's Funtouch 9.2 system. With its appearance, the icons acquire smooth gradients, pastel colors. The long-awaited features of switching to a dark theme and desktop customization appear. When creating this system, the developers focused on the IOS operating system, so to some extent you get an Iphone, but at a huge discount.

Updates to version 10, unfortunately, are not expected.

autonomy

Finally, we come to one of the most delicious parts of the review. Vivo is not like its Asian counterparts, because it is in its interests to recreate a powerful gaming smartphone with a quality camera, and not choose one thing. That is why significant amounts were spent on the filling.

The U20 model is equipped with one of the most productive nanometer chips with 8 cores - Snapdragon Qualcomm 675. Experts have long recognized its exclusivity. Without even thinking, the Americans created a processor that surpassed not only its predecessors, but also the future generation 710 in terms of performance. Largely due to the powerful ARM architecture, which increases the speed of a smartphone by 40%, due to the division of processes into two clusters of 2 and 6 cores respectively. The first one, which took the cores with a frequency of 2 × 2.0 GHz and Kryo 460 Gold, is responsible for heavy 3D games and applications. The second one supports the entire system as a whole.

Buyers who had time to try the phone in action were upset by overheating of the case and strong bugs while playing online shooters.On the other hand, a fan of Speed ​​Racing or WoW, on the contrary, praised the speed of the novelty, and in fact they are often considered heavy even for a PC.

Vivo is amazing for both selfie lovers and avid gamers.

Battery

The budget novelty never ceases to amaze us. She managed to snatch a non-removable battery with an excellent value - 5000 mAh. This capacity is quite enough for 2 days of use with the Internet, social networks. networks, a full suite of applications, or 24 hours of active gameplay. The developers have done a great job on a seemingly cheap flagship. They also did not disregard the function of fast charging at 18 volts. With such luggage in standby mode, he will live 5-7 days. The video plays for 21 hours, and is in talk mode for about 16.

In addition, other factors influenced the charge consumption. For example, the Funtouch shell saves up to 10%, and the game acceleration system another 5% extra.

In general, the smartphone outperforms many equally powerful smartphones in various price segments in terms of battery performance.

Camera and memory

We will not tire of repeating that the Vivo U20 model has every chance to become one of the best in 2020 thanks to its exemplary performance. For example, the camera turned out to be quite good values ​​​​and fully satisfied the need of users for a juicy selfie.

On the rear panel is located the main camera unit, consisting of three sensors. The main camera produces a quality of 16 megapixels, with the ability to shoot Full HD video in wide format at 30 frames per second. Aperture - f / 1.8, bright, without unnecessary noise. With it, daytime shots in both sunny and cloudy weather are equally clear and saturated.Let's turn again to Funtouch, with its help the phone can independently select the brightness of the photo, and after shooting it will automatically improve it. The camera interface is made entirely by Iphone design. You can choose from standard features: landscape, portrait, fireworks, bokeh, blur, sepia and b/w. They added flaw correction, color saturation adjustment, various warm and cold effects.

The second lens has got 8 megapixels, as well as the ability to shoot videos and photos with an ultra-wide viewing angle. This is a big plus for fans of large-scale selfies and just lovers of travel photos. The f/2.2 aperture is also known for its dislike of dark photographs. With it, it will be easy to get a beautiful frame even at night. The main camera block is completed by a small 2 megapixel lens responsible for macro photography.

The brand even customized the front camera as much as possible. It will gladly give you unforgettable moments in 16-megapixel quality. Users and bloggers (the most stringent judges) awarded the lens a solid four. Colors are transmitted naturally, there are no highlights or broken proportions.

And to save all the received frames will certainly work with an incredible amount of built-in memory - 64 gigabytes. If this is not enough for someone, then you can always use a memory card up to 512 GB.

Where to buy and at what price

The release of the smartphone took place only on November 23, 2019. Naturally, the model could not spread around the world in such a short time. According to rumors, it will reach Russia 100% and will cost around 250 euros or 11 thousand rubles.

Advantages and disadvantages

• Beautiful appearance;
• Large screen with IPS matrix;
• Unique functions, author's shell;
• Advanced operating system;
• Decent performance;
• 5000 mAh capacitive battery;
• Powerful cameras;
• Large amount of memory;
• Full HD quality;
• Super high speed USB cable.

• Marked case, prone to damage;
• Fragile screen without protection;
• Few colors;
• The case of the flagship is very hot.

It is impossible to make a completely positive or negative verdict on this new product. She has impressive advantages and unique features that distinguish her from all models of the budget segment. The U20 phone will be a great helper for both children and adults, because it is designed for both office work and active games.