As smartphone prices have started to hit the ceiling of 3 digit prices, and some going even further beyond, it seems as if the competition has now shifted to the lower mid-range market. Vivo is one such company that has started to reap the profits of phones in the 20k – 40k segment. With a price tag of 34k rupees, Vivo hopes to get your attention with the Vivo V9. And it seems like they’ve done one hell of a job.

Design

The Vivo V9 is a solid phone. The phone packs a huge 6.3-inch screen in a relatively small body, a design pattern we’re now used to seeing. The near bezel-less display instantly makes the phone more appealing than phones you would have gotten at this price a few years ago. The front is made of glass whereas the back aluminum. Normally, we’d see a glass back and aluminum front but that doesn’t make the phone any less pretty. As with almost every Chinese phone nowadays, the top of the display houses a notch. Some will like it while others will hate it.

The back of the phone is clean, save for the fingerprint sensor comfortably placed in the upper half of the phone towards the middle: the sweet spot of fingerprint sensors. On the top left corner, we have the vertically aligned dual camera setup and LED flash.

Display

The display of the Vivo V9 is something to look at. While it may not have QuadHD displays like the flagships of today, FHD+ resolution on a 6.3-inch screen isn’t bad at all either. With a pixel density of 400ppi, you won’t be missing any details. The screen itself is an IPS-LCD display. It may not be as punchy and appealing as AMOLED/OLED displays, IPS LCD ones are the next best thing.

Camera

The main focus of the Vivo V9 is its front facing 24MP selfie camera. With an aperture of f/2.0 and AI beautification software, you can rest assured that your selfies will be Instagram worthy. On the opposite end we have the dual camera setup which comprises of a 16MP lens and a 5MP depth sensing secondary one. Both lens also have an aperture of f/2.0, and the larger sensor also comes equipped with phase detection auto focus so you can get continuous focus in your videos. The video quality itself maxes out at 1080p at 30 frames per second.

Hardware

Coming to the main part of the phone, the hardware in the Vivo V9 is what we’ve come to expect every mid ranger in this price range to ship with. For starters, we have your standard 4GB RAM with 64GB of internal memory. Such plentiful resources mean lag is an issue you’ll rarely ever face, if not never. The battery in the Vivo V9 is a 3260mAh cell, so you should be able to get through a day for the most part. The SoC of choice for the Vivo V9 is the Snapdragon 625, a competent octa-core processor. Finally, and thankfully, the phone ships with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box alongside Vivo’s custom FunTouch OS 4.0.

Vivo V9 pros:

• Large beautiful screen.
• Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box
• Great selfie camera

Vivo V9 cons:

• Nothing that we can really think of to be honest!