vivo Y33s Long Term Review - Great looks, long battery, quite expensive for the overall specs
We share our thoughts and experiences with the vivo Y33s after months of use.
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| vivo Y33s |
Launched in October 2021, the vivo Y33s features a large 6.58-inch FHD+ LCD display. Inside is the 12nm MediaTek Helio G80 octa-core processor, Mali-G62 GPU, 8GB RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery with 18W fast charging.
In the Philippines, the vivo Y33s is priced at PHP 12,999 for the 8GB/128GB model.
How does it perform in real life?
Let's find out!
For our review part 1: vivo Y33s Unboxing and First Impression!
Multimedia Experience
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| Curved LCD screen! |
In front of the vivo Y33s is the large 6.58-inch 2.5D curved LCD screen with 2408 x 1080 resolution. The panel is surprisingly bright with vibrant color, good sharpness, and detail. The Blacks are good for an LCD panel. It also supports 10-points of multitouch that are responsive, accurate, and quick most of the time.
1080p panel, but no high refresh rate mode
We love the panel and even though the bezels are slim, we can't discount the thicker bottom bezel and the notch. Competition is fierce and there are smartphones that are priced lower but have higher refresh rates and have AMOLED panels. It is a great screen but there are better in the price range.
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| Bottom-firing speaker |
The phone features an earpiece above the front-facing camera and a mono bottom-firing speaker. At maximum volume, the speaker is loud enough to be heard in a small room but will struggle in larger or noisy environments. The sound at 80 to 100 percent is also tingy with noticeable distortion. We recommend placing the speaker volume at 70 percent for the least amount of distortion with acceptable volume.
The microphones can pick up audio from under a meter away. The noise cancellation is decent enough that our callers never complained about voice quality. There is only one visible microphone port at the bottom.
Cameras
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| Rear triple cameras |
At the back is a triple camera setup made up of a 50MP f/1.8 main camera, 2MP f/2.4 macro, and 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor with an LED flash.
50MP main cam, but there's no ultra-wide secondary cam
The stock camera app includes the following modes: Photo, Video, Portrait, Night, 50MP, Pano, Live Photo, Slo-Mo, Time-lapse, Pro, and Document.
The Pro mode allows for controls of ISO (100-3200), Shutter speed (1/12000s to 32 seconds), White Balance, EV (+-3), and controls to switch between the 1x camera and 2x camera.
Rear Camera Samples
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| Daylight 1x |
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| Daylight 2x |
The vivo Y33s's camera app allows users to crop into 2x from the 1x. So essentially, the 2x is just the 1x cropped in.
In daylight, the images have great color, contrast, and dynamic range. The sharpness is just okay. We've seen sharper and more detailed images from similarly priced phones.
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| Close-up |
When shooting images close-up, the images are the same in daylight. Sharpness and detail are decent while the color, contrast, and dynamic range are good.
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| Rear camera Portrait mode |
The portrait mode also delivers the same quality as the daylight and indoors. Where the portrait mode's edge detection falters is in the individual hair fibers. If you look closely at the cat's left ear, the edge detection also made a mistake by including the inner white areas of the cat's left ear in the bokeh.
The artificial bokeh looks okay but it is obvious when compared side by side with natural bokeh.
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| Indoors 1x camera |
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| Indoors 2x camera |
Indoors, the photos produce images with the same quality as the daylight images. It has good color, and contrast. The sharpness and detail are there but it does struggle with bright areas from light sources. The areas with gradients do not look natural. In short, the dynamic range from bright areas are a struggle for the camera.
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| Lowlight 1x |
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| Lowlight 2x |
In low light, the camera produces decent images. There is noise but it doesn't ruin the color and the contrast. The noise only softens the image. This is surprising. Our only concern with the low light images is that the cameras still struggle with the dynamic range from light sources or bright areas.
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| Night mode 1x |
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| Night mode 2x |
The Night Mode is able to reduce the noise but the sharpness and detail barely improved from the low light images. However, the color and contrast remain good.
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| Front-facing camera |
While on the notch is the 16MP f/2.0 selfie shooter. The selfie includes the following modes: Photo, Portrait, Night, and video.
Selfie Camera Samples
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| Daylight selfie |
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| Indoor selfie |
Indoors, there is an increase in noise and grain which slightly reduced the detail and sharpness of the image. Otherwise, the colors are still good and the contrast improves.
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| Low light selfie |
In low light, the phone struggled with increased noise but it managed to maintain enough sharpness and contrast to make it okay. However, the color did not become as accurate as in daylight and indoors.
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| Night mode selfie |
The Night mode was able to recover by reducing the noise and improving the sharpness. The color is vibrant and the contrast is deep. Where the night mode struggles are the light sources. If you look closely at the Christmas lights, there are some weird grey or brown artifact.
The rear and front cameras can capture up to 1080p. There is no option to select a preferred frame rate.
The resulting video captured has decent sharpness but it struggles in several ways. The footage is shaky and the software is transitioning between ISOs a lot during a video session. This results in footage with images that goes darker and goes brighter throughout the video. The exposure is not stable. We hope vivo can fix this thru firmware.
Note: We will upload our video samples here. Stay tuned!
Performance
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| AnTuTu and GeekBench |
Inside the phone is the 12nm MediaTek Helio G80 octa-core processor, Mali-G52 2EEMC2 GPU, 8GB RAM, and 128GB of storage.
Speed is not on par with the competition
It managed to score 240,262 in AnTuTu and scored 352 in Single-core and 3041 in Multi-core tests in GeekBench.
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| 3DMark and CPDT |
While in 3DMark Wild Life, the phone managed to score 685 overall and got a 4.1 fps average. These scores are okay though there are faster phones in the same bracket.
While in the internal storage benchmark CPDT, it scored over 241.41 MB/s in sequential read speeds and 164.5 in sequential write speeds. These are impressive read speeds but the write speeds are lower than expected from a flagship.
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| Call of Duty: Mobile |
In the latest version of Call of Duty: Mobile, the phone managed to unlock the Medium graphics settings and the High frame rate setting. At these settings, the phone warms up quickly so we recommend lowering the graphics settings to low and keeping the high frame rate to be able to play for longer play sessions.
The side-mounted fingerprint scanner is easy to set up and it detects and scans the fingerprint quickly. Because it is a dedicated sensor, it scans our fingerprints and unlocks the phone instantaneously.
While the Face Unlock with the selfie camera is also easy to set up and works fast. It detects our faces and unlocks the phone instantaneously in both well-lit and poorly lit environments. The screen brightens up when in a darker environment too.
The phone works with OTG when the feature is enabled manually. The WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, and LTE connections are fast, stable, and reliable. The GPS acquires our location immediately and accurately.
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| PCMark Battery benchmarks |
Inside the phone is a large 5,000mAh battery with 18W fast charging thru USB-C. In our usual PCMark battery test, the phone managed to endure over 18 hours and 4 minutes.
While in our real-world use where we use the phone as our daily driver, it managed to last for 7 hours and 58 minutes of on-screen time after a loaded 8-hour workday. This is impressive given that there is still 25 percent battery left even though we were connected to LTE and WiFi the whole day.
It takes the phone under 90 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 percent with the 18W charger. This is a reasonably fast charging for its price range. It is not the fastest but we have more than enough battery before bedtime to always just charge the phone before we go to bed at night.
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| FunTouch OS |
For software, it is running on the latest Android 11-based FunTouch OS 11.1. Like the rest of the previous vivo series, the FunTouch OS is one of the prettier skins. What we love about it is the visual design. What we think could be improved is the removal of the bloatware. Some of this bloatware cannot be removed which takes up storage space.
Performance-wise, navigating thru the UI and launching apps is decently fast. We have no complaints about the overall performance phone. We just hope we get the ability to uninstall bloatware.
Pros - Eye-catching design, solid and lightweight build materials, good display, great battery life
Cons - Cameras could be improved, no ultra-wide shooter, bloatware, similarly priced phones have 5G
vivo Y33s Specs
Display: 6.58-inch 2.5D curved LCD screen w/ FHD+ 2408 x 1080 resolution at 401 ppiCPU: 2.0GHz 12nm MediaTek Helio G80 octa-core processor
GPU: Mali-G52 2EEMC2 (950MHz)
RAM: 8GB
ROM: 128GB expandable storage via microSD card slot up to 1TB
Back Camera: 50MP f/1.8 + 2MP f/2.4 macro + 2MP f/2.4 depth + LED flash
Selfie Camera: 16MP f/2.0
Battery: 5,000mAh w/ 18W Fast Charging
OS: Android 11 w/ Funtouch OS 11.1
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz/5GHz), 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, dual SIM
Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic
Others: Side-mounted fingerprint sensor, USB-C, Colors: Mirror Black, Midday Dream
Dimensions: 164.26 x 76.08 x 8.0 mm
Weight: 182 g
Price: PHP 12,999
Verdict
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| View of our website on the Y33s |
The vivo Y33s have lightweight and solid build materials with an eye-catching design. Its combination of FunTouchOS and 5,000mAh battery helps it achieve near 2-day battery life. The screen features a bright and vibrant FHD+ screen.
But, we have several main concerns. The first is that the Helio G80 is great but is underwhelming for the price point. The second is that the cameras are good on paper but the actual performance struggles in both low light and in daylight.
Overall, the vivo Y33s is a good pick if you want a good-looking phone with long battery life and a good screen. But if you are looking for value for money raw power, then this phone may not be for you.
What do you guys think?
Build/Design - 4.25
Multimedia Experience - 4.5
Cameras - 4.5
Performance - 4
Average - 4.31/5
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