Vivo V11 Review - The company's best in PH yet!

The Vivo V9 impressed us with its 24MP selfie camera its AI capabilities. How will they surpass this with the new V11? Let's see if they did go beyond.

V11 review!

The headline new features is the new elegant design, improved dual cameras, better 25MP selfie camera and the AI assistant named "Jovi."

Under the hood is the heavily modified Snapdragon 660 AIE octa-core processor with the Adreno 512 GPU with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

Let's check it out!

Vivo V11 Specs

Display: 6.41-inch 2.5D curved Super AMOLED screen w/ FHD+ 2340 x 1080 resolution at 422 ppi 

CPU: 1.95GHz 64-bit Snapdragon 660 AIE octa-core processor 

GPU: Adreno 512

RAM: 6GB

ROM: 64GB expandable via microSD card slot up to 256GB (dedicated)

Back Camera: 12MP f/1.8 + 5MP f/2.4 w/ Dual Pixel PDAF focus and dual-tone LED flash

Selfie Camera: 25MP f/2.0 w/ AI and screen flash

Battery: 3,400mAh w/ dual engine fast charging

OS: Android 8.1 Oreo w/ Funtouch OS 4.5

Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz/5GHz), dual 700MHz 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.2, A2DP, LE, OTG, GPS, A-GPS, dual SIM

Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic

Others: In-Display fingerprint sensor, IR face unlock, dual mic, Colors: nebula, starry night

Dimensions: 157.9 x 75 x 7.9 mm

Weight: 156 g

Price: PHP 19,999

Unboxing/Accessories

V11 unboxed!

It comes in the familiar white box with a new parallel lined textured finish with branding and a large picture of the phone in front.

Inside is the phone along with the earphones, USB Type-A to micro USB, 9V/2A dual engine power plug, polycarbonate jelly case, documentation and SIM ejector tool.

Build Quality/Design

Starry gradient color

The V11's design is a huge leap from the V9 whereas the V9 used a basic gold or black colored polycarbonate back plate.

The V11 adds a premium textured acrylic while the gold trim accents around the dual cameras that places it a few steps above it.

The acrylic is polished in away that you would mistake it for glass. Below the glass is a new gradient design that is gaining popular in 2018.

Top view

Speaker, micro USB, mic, and 3.5 mm jack slot

Buttons at right

The top part of the back is a solid black or blue color and below it is a gradient that reminds us of glitter in either blue or purple color. Both are stunning looking.

One of the smallest notch ever

In front is the large display with one of the smallest notch we've ever seen. Above the notch is the earpiece and below this is the camera. Below the display is a chin bezel.

Over 90 percent screen-to-body ratio!

On top of the phone is a single microphone while below are the 3.5 mm headphone jack, microphone, micro USB port, and the bottom firing speaker.

The right side has the volume rocker and the power button while the left has the sim card tray. The tray can house two micro SIM cards and one microSD card.

We love the new design and we can't deny that we prefer the simplicity over the OPPO F9's petal design holographic that reminds us of our old Pokemon cards.

Display Quality

Big screen, small notch

As mentioned above, it is a large 6.41-inch 2.5D curved Super AMOLED display with the small "halo" notch.

FHD+ Super AMOLED on a mid-range phone!

The upgrade to a Super AMOLED display is the best choice because not even the best IPS display could compete with the brightness, contrast, vibrance, wide viewing angles and deep blacks. This is true for the V11's display.

The colors pop, the contrast and blacks are deep that when we put it side by side with phones with an IPS panel, they couldn't compete. The viewing angles are also much wider and the deep blacks really help when viewing content with dark scenes.

Vivo was also able to shrink the notch to one of the smallest we've ever seen. They are calling it the Halo notch and it is amazing how small these things are getting.

The new display supports 10 points of multi-touch that will make it handy for multitasking or games that support it.

Audio Quality

At the bottom is the single firing speaker with one of the loudest maximum volume we've ever got to try. What is amazing is that even at the highest volumes, there is minimal distortion.

The sound is deep with good clarity while the instrumental separation and sound stage is decent for a single speaker.  The bass and mids are prioritized with decent trebles.

The stock earpod-like earphones that comes in the box has a clean output with good instrumental separation and sound stage. Like the speaker, it tends to be biased on the bass and mids.

Using your HiFi grade earphones would be even better.

There are two microphones found on top and below which allows for decent audio recording and a good telephony experience. The recorded sound is crisp.

Battery

What we loved about the V7 and the V9 were the ridiculously good battery not because of the capacity but because of the software optimization. The same can be said for the V11 but with a larger 3,400mAh battery

In our usual, PCMark battery test, it crashed at the last minute like it did with the V9. This was 10 hours after we started the test. We still haven't figured out why this happens.

In our day to day use with constant LTE and WiFi connection, messaging, calls, social media, Chrome web surfing, YouTube streaming and TNVS, we were getting more than 12 hours of use. We would unplug the phone from the charger at 8AM and by 8PM we would have 15 to 20 percent battery left. It is mind boggling how a 3,400mAh battery can last that long.

This is one of the phones where benchmarks and real world use is so different. Well done Vivo. You've kept your battery optimization crown.

Charging time using the stock 9V/2A dual engine fast charging tech is around 1 hour from 0 to 100 percent. From 15 to 80 percent is just around 30 minutes. It is that fast!

The "dual engine" fast charging technology of Vivo is almost as good if not better than the VOOC flash charge of OPPO.

It even has 9-layer of battery protection against overcharging.

Camera

Pretty good dual cameras!

The rear facing camera is a 12MP f/1.8 with 5MP f/2.4 dual lens set up with Dual Pixel Phase Detect autofocus with a dual-tone LED flash. It comes with AI enhanced features like AI Backlight HDR, AI Face Beauty, AI scene detection and AI portrait framing.

The pro mode

It also has a Professional mode that allows for down to ISO 50 up to 3200 and shutter speed up to 32 seconds. The EV is locked though.

AI Portrait framing

The Bokeh mode works in both the main camera and rear camera and you can adjust the aperture after the shot was taken.

It has a Doc mode that scans the image area for documents.  

Last is the AR stickers which scans the face and adds augmented reality animations on the face like SnapChat. there are some animations built in the phone and the rest is downloadable.

It even has AI Portrait framing which can help you take better shots,


The images that come out of the rear camera are crazy sharp for a mid-range smartphone. The color is saturated but in a pleasing way and not in an off-putting way. The close to natural bokeh is also very pleasing. The AI Backlight HDR feature works great for against the light shots.

Lowlight performance is also decent thanks to its f/1.8 aperture size and Dual Pixel PDAF focus.

The images remind us of the images from 2017 flagships.

Camera Samples

Normal

AI Backlight HDR

Bokeh f/4.0

Bokeh f/4.0 sample number 2

Close-up indoor

Lowlight

Night shot

Long exposure ISO 50, 2s

The selfie camera on the other hand is a 25MP f/2.0 shooter with one of the sharpest selfie cameras we’ve ever tried.

25MP selfie shooter

It has the same features with the added Group Selfie mode which is a Panorama selfie where in you orient the phone from point a to b to get a wider field of view.

Selfie UI

There is the AI face beauty mentioned above has beautification modes like buffing, skin tone, thin face, this nose, mouth shaping, nose bridge and face reshaping. It is one of the more robust face beauty modes we’ve seen so far.

Solid upgrade over V9's 24MP shooter!

The colors are the same with the main camera where in the skin tones are great with majority of the colors are vibrant but in a good way. The contrasts however are decent only.

Selfie Camera Samples

Daylight selfie

Selfie bokeh

Indoor selfie

Indoor dim selfie

Lowlight selfie

It can shoot up to 4K at the back. The 4K video is a bit softer than expected. But, it has good colors. We also like that it has time-lapse and slow motion mode. However, the 1080p is a bit shaky.  We are not sure if it has EIS. For selfies, it has up to 1080p in quality with  slightly better stabilization.

Video Samples

Performance

The AnTuTu and Geekbench benchmark scores

It uses a modified 1.95GHz 64-bit Snapdragon 660 AIE octa-core processor with the Adreno 512, 6GB RAM and 64GB ROM. This effectively makes the V11 not the fastest or most powerful device in the price range but it doesn't have to be.

Snapdragon 660 AIE is still quite fast!

Compared to previous phones with the Snapdragon 660 like the Nokia 7 Plus, we experienced a noticeably faster and snappier performance. The AIE added to it may be the cause as it uses machine learning to optimize all processes.

It doesn't have the Nova 3i's massive 128GB ROM but it has 64GB of RAM and can be expanded via microSD card up to 256GB.

This phone is designed to be a camera focused phone that can do decent gaming. So it won't beat the Pocophone F1's Snapdragon 845 but it can game well. It is nearer to the F7/F9's Helio P60's performance but with a more robust AI features.

In games like PUBG, it was running smooth with out stuttering at High HD settings. This is one of the phones that can do this without a hitch. The phone only became warm after 30 mins of gameplay.

It is easily one of the smoothest at this price point. Hiccups are very rare and it can open apps quickly. Switching from an app to another is also smooth.

Like the V9, it also has the AI game mode for uninterrupted gaming.

FuntouchOS 4.5

It is running on the latest version of FuntouchOS 4.5 based on Android 8.1 Oreo. We mentioned before in our reviews of the V9 and V7 that we like how Funtouch perfectly blends iOS and Android with its UI design and elements.

Apps pre-installed in the V11 are usually Vivo's version of Android/Google services with the exception of the Facebook app and the Lazada app.

This is a personal preference but I prefer the swipe-up control panel that allows quick access to the notification toggles normally found on the notification panel. 

Our nitpick is that the settings menu has a lot of items and looking for the settings category you need to get to is difficult to find and there is no search bar to aid in this. We hope Vivo would add a search button.

In-Display fingerprint scanner

The In-Display fingerprint sensor is noticeably faster and more reliable than the implementation in the X21. It still isn't as fast as dedicated scanner from the Vivo V9.

Animation styles of the In-Display fingerprint scanner

In fact, once you set up the new IR face unlock that uses the fast Face Unlock from the V9 and V7 with a new IR sensor which adds another layer of security. This unlocks so quickly  that as soon as I tap the power button to turn on the display, it unlocks the phone already. It doesn't even give the phone enough time to display the finger graphic that indicates where the in-display scanner is.

Jovi AI

It also has a new Jovi smart AI assistant that helps in three categories: Smart Camera, Smart Scene and Game mode. 

In Smart Camera it is the AI behind the Smart Face Beauty that determines the real time beautification while the AI Scene Identification is the one that determines if the scene in the camera is one of 17 predetermined scenes and then adjust the camera settings accordingly. Lastly is the AI Portrait framing which is used with the rear camera. It detects the distance, orientation and position of the face of the subject and recommend an appropriate position for better composition and then when the phone user moves the phone to Jovi's desired composition it will take the photo.

In the Smart Scene it aggregates information and will notify you to remind you to rest, your events, your favored sports news and your daily step count.

Lastly is the Game mode where it says it enhances the user experience but it isn't explicit on how it does this. Other AIs from other companies optimise the performance for better gaming but without official confirmation, we will never know.

Jovi is not a Google Assistant replacement nor does it replace Google Lens which is integrated with the Vivo camera app.

The telephony experience is good because of the strong signals from LTE and 3G in the high traffic areas in Metro Manila. The GPS is accurate while the Bluetooth connects seamlessly to compatible devices.

It has a gyroscope and OTG support. There is no NFC and LED notification light. Instead it has a light animation around the edges of the screen like the OPPO Find X and the Galaxy S and Note series.

Pros - Stunning design despite using acrylic, halo notch is small, Super AMOLED panel, near flagship grade dual cameras because of AI, long lasting battery, nice mono speaker

Cons - Not USB Type-C, settings menu is chaotic without search button, video in camera app doesn't indicate framerates

Verdict

The Vivo V11 is a giant leap from the V9 with new features from the AI Jovi, stellar battery, near flagship grade camera and Super AMOLED display.

Though it may have downsides like not using USB Type-C in 2018, nor is the UI appealing to everyone because of how chaotic it can get but then again, you can't ask too much for the mid-range price point. 

You can get it for only PHP 19,999! Or get it at 0 percent interest via Home Credit!

For us, the Vivo 11 is the best the company has released in the PH yet because of the incredible value it offers.

Build / Design - 4.5

Display - 4.5

Audio - 4.25

Battery - 4.5

Camera - 4.5

Performance - 4.5

Average - 4.46/5