Vivo Y91i Review

Vivo is known for its camera phones and Vivo is doing really good in semi-premium range devices but when it comes to the cheap and affordable smartphones Vivo is not quite there yet. This market is totally dominated by Xiaomi. Vivo yet again tried to enter the low budget smartphone market with a new product named Vivo V91. This phone falls under the 10k range and is a decent smartphone but not great.

Let’s not waste any more time and get straight to business.

Today we’ll be reviewing Vivo V91 handset and will try to give our best verdict on the question that is it worth your money or not?

Vivo V91 offers 2 hardware configurations one having 2GB RAM/32GB ROM and other having 3GB RAM/32GB ROM the storage is however expandable up to 256GB using SDcard. For color choice, we are limited to Nebula Purple, Starry Black, and Ocean Blue. The color options are great, we got our hands on Starry black variant for the review. The colors are very basic and nothing fancy going on back there. At the time of writing this review, the 3GB variant is available for INR 9,990 at Flipkart under the Flipkart limited offer. Grab one till the offer lasts.

The device comes in a pretty box with some details about the variant written on top like Internal storage etc. In the box, we get a Silicone protective cover, Vivo V91 handset, Sim-eject Tool, AC adapter, USB-micro cable, and Documentations. There’s nothing new in the box that you won’t get with any other smartphone. So that’s about it for the box contents.

Here is a quick overview of what you’ll be getting inside the box:

– Vivo V91

– A USB cable (Micro USB)

– AC Adapter

– Sim ejector tool

– Hard silicone case

– Documentation

Before we share our thoughts on the Vivo V91, let’s have a look at the specifications.

– Display: 6.22 inches 1520 x 720 pixels, 270 PPI IPS LCD

– Processor: Octa-Core, 2 GHz MediaTek Helio P22

– GPU : PowerVR GE8320

– RAM & ROM: 2/3GB RAM, 32GB storage (expandable storage up to 256GB)

– Rear camera: 13 MP + 2 MP

– Selfie camera: 8MP

– Battery: 4030mAh

– Software: Android 8.1(Funtouch OS 4.5)

– Price: ₹ 9,990 (at the time of writing this review)

With specs being cleared, let’s jump right into our detailed review.

Vivo, as everyone expects, would make an eye-catching beautiful device and this handset stands up to Vivo’s reputation. The device looks beautiful and has a premium look to it. The back panel is made out of plastic which is very glossy and reflective and attracts fingerprint marks very quick. The front of the device looks very minimalistic. with great display and waterdrop notch. All the other components like physical buttons and the fingerprint sensor are located in a comfortable position and easily reachable. The build quality, in my opinion, is very average but once you put on the protective case that wouldn’t matter.

At the back, we get a plastic panel because that’s economical and you can’t expect a phone under 10k to have a glass back panel. The pattern on the back is nothing fancy but its good in its own way. That being said we also have the dual-camera module and the fingerprint reader on the back. Camera module is aligned vertically on the left top corner whereas the fingerprint reader is located at the center.

If we talk about front we have a beautiful 720p screen accompanied by a water drop notch which adds to the beauty of the device. The call receiver is also located in the front just above the camera. The thin bezels also make the device look bigger.

At the bottom, we have the 3.5mm headphone jack, primary microphone, a bottom-firing speaker grill and a micro USB port for data transfer and charging. This phone is still using micro USB but it would have been nicer if it had a USB-C port instead.

The top of the device is totally empty. On the right, we have the volume and power buttons. They are placed in such a way that both are comfortable to access. Overall the device’s design is superb but let’s see if this phone has performance as good as the design in the next sections.

The Vivo V91 has a 6.22 inches IPS LCD display with a screen resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels and 270 PPI pixel density. Even though the screen configuration doesn’t seem much but this configuration is very common nowadays for the budget smartphones. The low-resolution display helps in saving a huge amount of battery but at a cost of compromising quality. I think 720p screens are good enough, just for the sake of comparison the iPhone 7 also had a 720p screen. The colors are definitely not that punchy or saturated and you’ll notice the difference immediately if you’re switching from a 1080p display. The viewing angles and the brightness is good too.

When it comes to performance this is definitely not the best one out there in this price range but that doesn’t mean this is the worst device out there. This handset is equipped with an Octa-Core, 2 GHz MediaTek Helio P222 Processor and 3GB RAM along with 32GB of internal storage. We were surprised to see this device perform so poorly in our performance test.

The device started lagging in the early stages of the multitasking test and even became unresponsive for a few seconds during switching apps. This RAM management on this phone is poor and heavy multitasking is not possible here. This device can handle low graphics games like Asphalt 8 smoothly but when it comes to heavy games like PUBG this phone just gives up. The phone crashed multiple times during the launch of PUBG. The only way we could get PUBG to even start was after clearing all background apps this again shows how poor ram management is on this phone.

For normal usage and media content consumption, this device is fine but if you’re a power user this is not the device for you.

Vivo V91 is running on Funtouch OS 4.5 based on Android 8.1. The android version is a bit outdated and Vivo has given no word if there will be any android updates in the future or not so my guess is you’ll be stuck with Android 8.1 for the rest of the time. Funtouch OS is not the most user friendly OS and I personally didn’t like it at all. I felt that navigation was a bit confusing and my experience was not as good as expected. The device also comes with a ton of bloatware that can’t be removed. These bloatware hogs up space and drains the battery faster.

The software part could have been better and more optimized and hopefully, Vivo will roll out some software updates addressing these issues.

There are some good useful features in this OS too some of them are App clone, Smart Click, Smart motion,iThemes, and iManager.

Vivo V91 is loaded with a dual-camera setup on the rear and a single selfie camera embedded in the water drop notch at the front. The rear camera module consists of a 13MP and a 2MP lens. The rear camera photo quality was decent but I immediately noticed that a lot of details are missing and the image was over-processed. The pictures gave out artificial vibes and this is a major problem with many of the Vivo camera phones that they over-process the image and make them look artificial. The HDR mode is also not good, it’s not consistent at all, it might surprise you sometimes and might disappoint you the next second you never know.

Selfie camera performance was decent and it had the same issue of overprocessing images. There is also an AI beauty mode built in that enhances the photo and makes you look good so that’s something you should try out.

Both rear and selfie camera performed well in portrait mode photos. The boundary detection was on point for most of the time and I’m quite surprised how well they performed in portrait mode.

We have definitely seen a better camera than this in the same price range and Vivo should focus on making their camera better instead of just over processing the image to get good results.

This handset gets its power from a 4,030mAh which is quite massive considering a device with low specs. The battery provides a very good battery backup of up to 7-8 hrs of screen on time and the main reason for this great battery life is the 720p screen which consumes relatively less battery. Power saver mode is somewhat useful but it doesn’t make a considerable difference.