Vivo impresses us again with craftsmanship and the sound of its smartphone, but compromises on RAM and battery life. Hassan M Kamal takes it for a spin
Vivo Y27L
Vivo Y27L
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Design: The stunning design of the Vivo V1Max makes a comeback in the Y27L. The phone is identical to the V1Max in all aspects, but smaller — right from the placement of menu control buttons to the volume and power rockers. It gets a brushed-aluminum finish at the back with the brand logo embossed on it. A stainless steel rim running along the width, adds strength to its slim body. The device, however, comes with an independent slot for the memory card on top. It's available in two colours — blue and white.
Rating: 9/10
Display: The Y27L comes with a 4.7-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1280x720 and pixel density of above 300 ppi. The display quality works well for the small screen, offering superb clarity of text and picture. The screen, however, is prone to smudges and lacks any colour correction. The device comes with a protective layer of plastic (can be peeled off) on top of a toughened glass layer, which is also resistant to scratches.
Rating: 8/10
Connectivity: Like the V1Max, the Y27L is also a dual-SIM smartphone with support for 2G, 3G as well as 4G LTE networks. The SIM tray takes a micro SIM and a mini SIM, and is placed on the left edge of the phone. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and USB 2.0.
Rating: 8/10
Audio: Vivo has once again impressed with the audio quality of its smartphones. The Asahi AK4375 DAC does a superb job with the sound. The built-in speakers matched up to our expectations.
Rating: 9/10
Hardware and Performance: The Y27L's weaknesses begin to show when you put the hardware to test. The combination of Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset with 1.2GHZ quad core processor and 1GB RAM fails to live up to our satisfaction. The frames froze on several occasions, especially while multi-tasking. We think, it's the low RAM that plays the spoilsport. Apart from that, everything else seems to be working fine. We wouldn't recommend the Y27L for graphic-intensive games like Real Racing 3. However, you should be able to play games like Angry Birds with ease. The 16GB internal storage is sufficient to meet most of your needs, but can be expanded upto 128GB via a MicroSD card slot, placed on top of the device. We doubt you will be able to get a decent performance from high-capacity cards with just 1GB RAM.
Rating: 4/10
Camera: The device gets a 2MP front camera and an 8MP rear camera with flash. Though, we appreciate Vivo's attention to detail, both cameras fail to live up to our expectations. The images appear washed out and are a definite downer for night photography; not that daytime pictures look any better. If you are looking for a smartphone with a decent camera, you will be very disappointed with the Y27L.
Rating: 4/10
Battery: Another major disappointment of the device is its 2,260mAh battery. Despite limited usage of Wi-Fi, and no gaming time/video playback involved, the device fails to last a full day (on 3G).
Rating: 5/10
User Interface & OS: The Fun Touch OS by Vivo is impressive but unfortunately, it's built on top of Android Kitkat 4.4.4. Considering Google has already released Marshmallow, the least Vivo could do is offer the Android Lollipop in the device.
Rating: 6/10
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