Vivo X70 Pro Plus Review: Is this the true premium flagship from Vivo that can raise the bar?

Vivo X70 Pro Plus is a proper flagship that is worth buying!!

Vivo's X series of smartphones provide the complete flagship experience and are priced closer to flagships. The Vivo X60 series launched this year had three smartphones that were priced well of which the Vivo X60 Pro Plus brought in some very great cameras with the main and the telephoto cameras. Like the earlier X50 series, this too had gimbal stabilization which is quite different from regular OIS.

The Vivo X60 Pro Plus though sporting an excellent camera setup and outstanding performance with the Snapdragon 888 chipset had some lacking features which are generally found on a flagship as there was no official IP rating, no support for wireless and reverse wireless charging, and just had a Full HD+ resolution instead of Quad HD+ resolution since it was priced close to flagships.

But this year, Vivo has come up with two offerings from the X70 series: the Vivo X70 Pro and the Vivo X70 Pro Plus. With the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Review), Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, OnePlus 9 Pro (Review) having set a good position for itself in the premium flagship segment, has Vivo done its best with the X70 Pro Plus as it packs quite some good upgrades over the Vivo X60 Pro Plus and targeting to establish as a true premium flagship? 

Let's find out in the full review.

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Design:

In terms of design, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus is a big departure from the faux leather back of the Vivo X60 Pro Plus. Now with the Vivo X70 Pro Plus, you have a matte glass back with a satin finish that has the Vivo logo and this design provides it great grip and attracts almost no fingerprints. The camera module is slightly different when compared to the Vivo X60 Pro Plus.

There is a larger quad-camera module which is rectangular and alongside there is a mirror-like module with the Zeiss and Pro Plus branding that reflects when light strikes at it. On top of the camera module, there is a Zeiss logo and a T* just above the LED flashlight as the T* coating helps prevent lens flair while taking images under a solid source of light. The mirror-like finish module does catch a lot of fingerprints though.

The camera hump is slightly protruding but it rests well on the table. The back of the Vivo X70 Pro Plus gets an IP68 rating which was not present on the Vivo X60 Pro Plus so you take the Vivo X70 Pro Plus underwater for up to 30 minutes. Both the front as well as the back of the smartphone is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus which is the strongest glass protection till now. 

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is available in one color i.e. Enigma Black. Around the sides, there is an aluminum frame running that houses the volume buttons, and the power button on the right and the left side is completely clean. The top of the smartphone has the silver strip that has the "Professional Photography" etched on it and this time there is an IR Blaster with the secondary noise-canceling microphone.

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille that acts as stereo speakers, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack and no microSD card slot for storage expansion. The front of the Vivo X70 Pro Plus has a single punch-hole display which is curved and has minimum bezels around the sides. 

Around the sides, the smartphone is slightly thicker at 8.9mm and weighs around 213grams which makes it marginally heavier while holding in hand. Overall, the build and design feel premium on the Vivo X70 Pro Plus.

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Display:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus sports a massive 6.78-inches Quad HD+(1440x3200 pixels) AMOLED display where Vivo has used the E5 AMOLED panel that consumes less power and is efficient. This is a big upgrade over the Full HD+ display present on the Vivo X60 Pro Plus. The Quad HD+ display has great viewing angles and since it is AMOLED, the color reproduction is good.

However, you can switch between either Quad HD or Full HD. This display has a 120Hz refresh rate which makes things smoother whether multitasking between applications, scrolling through webpages, etc. This is an LTPO panel which means the refresh rate goes as low as 30Hz and can scale up to 120Hz depending on the application's usage. 

This helps in good battery life but still, it is not as good as the LTPO panel on the OnePlus 9 Pro that can scale as low as 1Hz. This display is a 10-bit display which is great as it has excellent color saturation on the display and produces more colors compared to an 8-bit display. There is a Smart Switch option where if you set this option, the display works the best for battery life. 

The curved display is easy to use and does not feel sharp during usage. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you are getting a 300Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. This display has a brightness of 1022nits and can touch a peak of 1500nits of brightness while watching contents in HDR. 

You can set the color temperature from warmer to cooler tone and also there are three different color profiles to choose from - Standard, Professional, and Bright. There is support for both Widevine L1 as well as HDR10+, so you can stream your OTT platforms in HDR. As this is an AMOLED display, an optical in-display fingerprint scanner is accurate and fast. 

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Performance:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus sports a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ chipset which is just the Snapdragon 888 chipset with a slightly higher clock speed. The Snapdragon 888+ has a 1x3.0GHz Kryo 680 core with 3x2.42GHz Kryo 680 cores (both based on Cortex-A78) and another lower clocked 4x1.8GHz Kryo 680 cores (based on Cortex-A55) is coupled with an Adreno 660 GPU.

There is no such difference between the Snapdragon 888 and the 888+ when it comes to performance. The general performance is good and it handles all the tasks like multitasking between applications, playing games, and also rendering videos without breaking a sweat. All games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings. 

However, playing BGMI for a longer time for around 4-5 hours, the back did feel warmer. Vivo has equipped the smartphone with a liquid cooling system that does dissipate heat but still, the back feels warmer after using the camera and playing games for a longer amount of time. Still, the Snapdragon 870 chipset is one of the best flagship chipsets that does not have heating issues which was present on the Vivo X60 Pro (Review).

When it comes to benchmarks, the scores in Antutu v8, are pretty good and are top-notch but when it comes to CPU throttling tests, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus throttles a lot thus leading to up and down in the tests due to the heating of the Snapdragon 888+ chipset. The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is available in only one variant - 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. So memory is not an issue here.

Other than this you get virtual RAM where you can allocate an extra 4GB of unused memory to RAM for better multitasking. As this is a 5G chipset, you get around 9 bands of 5G. Overall the performance feels smooth and fast but Vivo could do with the heating issues with a future software update.

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Software:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus runs on the latest FuntouchOS 12 with Android 11 out of the box. FuntouchOS 12 is not a significant improvement over FuntouchOS 11 but has certain improvements and new features. But it comes with a large amount of bloatware that consists of all third-party applications and some specific applications from Vivo that throw in a lot of notifications.

Vivo's browser application provides some unnecessary notifications which cannot be uninstalled but you can uninstall other third-party applications. The FuntouchOS like ColorOS provides a lot of features and customizations to icon shape and size, home screen layout, Always-On display, and also wallpapers. The look and feel are almost closer to Stock Android though.

One of the big changes is the change in the look of icons in the notification tray while swiping from the top. Then the system menus are more geared towards single-handed use. There is a new feature called Vivo X Care introduced with the Vivo X70 series which includes Vivo smartphone services from the pickup, drop, and also repairing devices in a small amount of time. 

There are some very cool widgets that you can use on the home screen. In terms of software updates, Vivo has not provided any clarity but it should get at least two years of OS and security patches. So software experience is a hit or miss whether you want a clean bloatware-free experience or the features that the FuntouchOS offers.

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Cameras:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus outshines the flagship segment when it comes to cameras. The back has a quad-camera setup that consists of a 50MP f/1.6 Samsung GN1 sensor for the main camera, a 48MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera that has gimbal OIS, an 8MP f/3.4 periscope telephoto camera, and a 12MP f/1.6 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom. All the other three cameras have OIS.

The front camera is 32MP f/2.5. The images from the main camera come out with good details and great dynamic range with very little noise and the colors also come out natural with no oversharpening. The shadows in highlights are much better and also if you take images at 50MP resolution, the details come out good but the images do crop in a bit.

There is a Zeiss Mode also which produces natural colors but does apply some oversharpening. Coming to the ultrawide camera, the 48MP one does a very good job in terms of dynamic range and level of details also. The noise is very low due to gimbal OIS. The color saturation is on the natural side. Similar at night, the images have good details with very little noise and have a good dynamic range.

Using Main Camera:

Using the ultrawide camera:

With Zeiss Mode off:

With Zeiss Mode turned on:

Main camera during the night:

Ultrawide camera during the night:

The 2x zoom camera is great in terms of color reproduction with slightly saturated colors. The dynamic range is good with very little noise and the level of details is good. Beyond 2x, the level of details comes out good but has slightly more noise but color saturation remains natural. Using the Night Mode, with the 2x zoom camera, the images have excellent detail and dynamic range.

The 5x optical zoom works very well as the presence of OIS helps reduce noise and the dynamic range is good. You have 60x digital zoom also which provides good details which look sharper and the noise is also minimal at that zoom level. Similarly, at night, the images have good dynamic range and the colors come out natural as there is no oversharpening present. 

The front camera takes some very good selfies with good dynamic range and the details look sharper with natural skin tone for human subjects. The selfie portraits have good edge detection and the background blur is well applied with no oversharpening taking place in the background. But sometimes the background blur is not applied properly and Vivo needs to fix this with a future software update.

In terms of portraits, the main camera takes some very good photos which provide 1x, 2x, and, 5x where portraits at 1x zoom have very sharper-looking details and dynamic range is good. The portraits have good edge detection and the background blur is also applied well. At 2x zoom level, the noise is quite present and the dynamic range is also good. 

At 5x zoom, the edge detection is not so good and when you zoom into the portraits, there is some noise present and the dynamic range is not so wide. The Zeiss Mode offers very good portraits which provide great dynamic range and the colors look natural. Overall, the cameras provide good images.

The videos from the main camera can shoot 8K videos at 30fps. The videos come out with great dynamic range and colors come out natural. The noise is very less noise in the videos and stabilization works fine here but switching to 4K videos at 60fps, the videos have much better dynamic range and details look sharper with good stabilization.

The ultrawide camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which provides good details and the dynamic range is good. The colors look natural with no such oversharpening present. The same goes for both the telephoto cameras which can record 4K videos at 60fps at 1x and 5x zoom, the colors look punchier, the details look sharper, and also the noise is very low especially due to the OIS.

The selfie videos come out with great dynamic range and the colors come out natural. The videos have a lot more noise but the details still look sharper. There is EIS press n t which provides stabilized videos and during the night, with the dedicated Night Mode takes some very good videos with good dynamic range and colors to look natural. The selfie portrait videos have good dynamic range and the noise is less but there is some oversharpening present.

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Battery Life:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus sports a 4500mAh battery which can easily last for two days with normal usage with the display set to standard 60Hz but if you switch to the 120Hz refresh rate, the smartphone lasts for one day and a half. With heavy usage that includes playing games for 4-5 hours, watching videos from OTT platforms, and multi-tasking between applications heavily, the smartphone lasts for one day and you need to charge during the night.

The standard screen-on time was around 4-5 hours which was not so good as other smartphones with 4500mAh battery provide much better battery life. The Snapdragon 888+ chipset does drain the battery life quite a bit but Vivo provides a 55W FlashCharge charger bundled inside the box which charges the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent within 40 minutes which is quite fast.

Another big upgrade which the Vivo X70 Pro Plus offer is support for 50W Wireless charging which takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent under an hour and there is also support for reverse wireless charging at 11W. Overall, the battery life is not so good as you are getting average battery life but the charging speeds and support for wireless charging is a good feature.

Vivo X70 Pro Plus Audio Quality:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus has support for stereo speakers where the audio quality is good but not great. The bass level is good but there is no 3.5mm headphone jack present. The level of loudness is great and the sound does not feel muffled when heard at the highest volume level. But Vivo does provide Type-C to USB earphones bundled inside the box.

Verdict:

The Vivo X70 Pro Plus is an excellent smartphone that proves to be a true all-rounder that has an excellent design, great display for media consumption, the performance feels really great with the Snapdragon 888+ chipset, has an excellent camera setup that tales very good images and videos and plus the extras like wireless charging and IP68 rating feel really great.

When it comes to cameras, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus provides an excellent set of cameras especially the presence of OIS in all cameras and also gimbal stabilization in the ultrawide camera. The display is great as the 120Hz AMOLED panel has LTPO technology which scales refresh rate depending on the application usage and it is great for media consumption.

The gaming feels great with the Snapdragon 888+ chipset but it does heat the smartphone quite a bit and this results in draining the battery a lot. The battery life could have been better and even in terms of software experience, FunTouchOS provides good features but comes with a lot of bloatware, and also the presence of ads makes it cumbersome to use.

The weight is also on the heavier side. Compared to other flagships, the Vivo X70 Pro Plus is a great flagship smartphone when compared to other smartphones like the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the OnePlus 9 Pro. So if you can skip the software experience and good battery life, then you are getting a great all-rounder premium flagship smartphone.