vivo has just dropped another impressive and sleek smartphone, the vivo V29 5G. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor and can have up to 20 Gigabytes of RAM. The vivo V29 5G has this new feature that can change the colour temperature that self-adjusts to match your lighting conditions. More on this later.
Inside the packaging, the phone comes with a clear flexible phone case, 80 Watt charger, USB data cable, SIM Ejector tool and with the screen protector already applied to the curved display.
You can watch this whole review in video format below.
Design
The first thing you notice when you hold the vivo V29 is the 3D Curved Design body. Both the display and the back cover curve towards the edge leaving this shiny edge on the longer sides. This edge is full size at the top and bottom where we find the SIM Tray, microphone, USB port and the speaker outlet. The phone weighs around 186g and it’s also very thin measuring in at only 7.46mm. At the top we have the words professional portrait printed right next to the secondary microphone. This phone does not have a headphone jack.
I have the Peak Blue version which incorporates tens of thousands of tiny magnetic particles into flowing resin. The result is a soothing colour that evokes peace and calm. When tilted, the light bounces off to give this floating mountain shapes vibe. The other colour version available is Noble Black that adopts the Fluorite AG Glass for its back cover. By the way this shiny back cover also extends to the camera module.
Camera
This is where we get the triple Camera set up as well as the flash and the new, bigger and better smart aura light portrait ring. The outer ring diameter is now bigger measuring 15.5mm and it enhances visual appeal but more importantly provides impressive lighting. The aura light provides colour temperature adjustment that will match your lighting conditions. This setting is available on both photo and video modes and you can choose to have it on auto or select exactly the colour temperature manually on the slider. By intelligently adjusting its color temperature from 1800K to 4500K, the Smart Aura Light ensures that the lighting experience remains precise and adaptable, eliminating the need for external fill lights.
Here are a few sample photos with the light on automatic versus OFF. You can clearly see the difference the aura light portrait ring makes. The same goes for videos as well. The main 50MP can shoot 4K videos @ 30 fps. The other qualities are 1080p at both 30 and 60fps.
This main lens is also capable of snapping images of the moon by using the super moon mode. On the other hand, the food mode makes your dishes look more appetizing than ever.
Not only are the portrait photos nice, but the AI HD Portrait mode also enhances the details in portrait photography. The V29 5G supports hiding pictures or videos in the hidden album to protect personal privacy.
The other two lenses comprise of an 8MP super wide angle and a 2MP super monochrome lens. At the front is a 50MP dot in in display lens with auto focus.
Shaking is usually the biggest pain point in video shooting. With dual Optical and Electronic Image stabilization. That is OIS and EIS in short, the footage with Ultra stabilization ON is much better and smoother especially when shooting while walking or even running for that case.
We are all used to or at least I am to Super night photography. Well, the vivo V29 5G goes further and has super night video as well. The setting is easily accessible, and the resulting videos are much better than just shooting using the normal mode. You can see this in my video review too.
The front 50MP lens takes very nice and detailed selfies. It has a wider field of view setting that enables much of the background or even your friends to be in frame in the selfie. This occurs with less facial distortion.
Display
The vivo V29 5G is equipped with a 120Hz 3D Curved AMOLED display. The 6.78” (172.2mm) large 3D Curved Screen has very narrow bezels and offers a large viewing area. The phone has a minimalist style and is comfortable to hold with one hand.
Normally, flagship smartphones are equipped with a full HD screen but the vivo V29 comes with a higher resolution of 2800×1260. Yes, you heard that right. The vivo V29 has a 4K screen. With a 5G connection or high speed Wi-Fi connection, you can enjoy 4K content on this phone. This is a lot and together with HDR10+ this makes it the perfect screen for multimedia consumption.
As far as gaming is concerned, the display supports 1000 Hz instant touch sampling rate which improves mobile gaming experience with quicker responses. The vivo V29 5G quietly stands out as one of the slimmest phones in its category, effortlessly combining style and convenience. This amazing display has one last trick up its sleeve and that’s the in screen fingerprint scanner. It’s very fast.
Performance & Software
How about the software and performance? The vivo V29 comes with the Funtouch OS 13 Global which is based on Android 13 and it currently has the October 2023 Android security patch. At the making of this video this was just last month. To enable the split screen feature, just swipe up with 3 fingers like this.
The V29 5G is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon® 778G processor with 12 gigabytes of RAM. It adopts an octa-core design, delivering superior computing power with reduced power consumption for smoother gameplay. The Extended RAM feature can get the RAM up to 20GB and this ensures that more apps can be kept active in the background. This also enables faster switching between apps and greatly improves the user experience when multiple apps are running in the background. The official storage is 256GB although I wish it would be 512GB or the phone should just have an external SD card slot.
Battery & Charging
An 80-watt flash charger and a considerable thicker than normal USB cable signals faster charging times. So, how long does it take to fill the 4600mAh battery? Well, from a flat battery I got 35% in 16 minutes, 66% in half an hour and full battery capacity in less than an hour. To be more specific it was 51 minutes. Here is my video battery charging experiment.
That is the fastest time that I have ever recorded in all the vivo smartphones that I have reviewed.
What about battery life? I thought that the super resolution AMOLED screen would consume much of the juice but I was wrong. I’m getting like 2 to 3 days’ worth of battery with normal consumption that includes social media, shooting videos and gaming occasionally.
So, tell me in the comments. What do you think of the vivo V29 5G? I think it’s an excellent premium and light smartphone. The colour changing aura light to match the environment is a huge feature and I think other manufacturers will start copying this feature very soon.
Great review, vivo never dissapoints!