Vivo has launched its V30e in India, and it certainly stands out in the V30 family. You see, despite having a similar name, it looks nothing like the more expensive V30 and V30 Pro. So, what exactly is Vivo trying to achieve with this smartphone? Let’s find out Vivo V30e Review
Vivo V30e Design & Display
The first impression of the V30e is undeniably positive. It comes in this unique dual-tone finish which is 80% matte and 20% glossy, and the matte section offers excellent fingerprint resistance.
This Velvet Red colourway is also quite attractive in my opinion. But weirdly enough, while the back panel of this colour is glass, if you opt for the other blue colour option, you’ll get a plastic back for some reason.
Generally I’m not a huge fan of off-centre circular camera islands, but it somehow works here.
But Vivo has really nailed this phone’s sleekness. It is only 7.75mm thick, yet it has a large 5500 mAh battery. Just look at how much thinner it is than the OnePlus 12R, which has a similar battery size.
The V30e boasts an IP64 rating adding a layer of peace of mind for users who lead active lifestyles.
It also comes with an optical fingerprint scanner which works pretty well. On the flipside, there is no stereo speaker setup on this smartphone, which I'm not too happy about.
Then there's the display - a 6.78-inch curved AMOLED display with resolution of FHD+ and a refresh rate of 120Hz. It looks great but it's not HDR-complaint, which is very surprising for a ~₹30,000 smartphone.
Despite this shortcoming, the display delivers vibrant colours and good outdoor legibility. It also has a claimed peak brightness of 1300 nits, so using it outdoors was not an issue.
Vivo V30e Cameras
The V30e sports a dual rear camera system consisting of a 50MP primary sensor with and an 8MP ultra-wide sensor.
Aura Light, which is now a staple of Vivo’s V-series, is also present here. However, this is the older version of Aura Light, and it's much smaller than the new square-shaped unit on the V30 and V30 Pro.
In well-lit conditions, the primary camera captures good quality images with a decent amount of detail and balanced colours.
The OIS helps to minimise camera shake, resulting in sharper photos. Low light photos are good-enough for the price as well, although they are nothing special.
Vivo’s v-series smartphones generally take amazing portrait photos, but, the V30e did leave me wanting a bit more
While the edge detection is great in portraits, the portrait mode always brightens up the person’s skin tones.
Also, the artificial lens flare options on the V30e miss the mark frequently and make the shots look a bit odd.
Anyway, the video captured from the main camera has a good amount of detail, but there's no stabilisation at 4K. So, you’d have to record at 1080p for stable footage.
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job at matching the colour profile of the main sensor. But, like most midrange ultrawide cameras, this will also give you softer photos.
Photos captured with the 50MP front have good detail and a balanced dynamic range.
Vivo V30e Performance & Software
The Vivo V30e is powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, a lower midrange processor.
Funnily enough, Vivo’s own T3x, which sells for essentially half the price of the V30e, also has the same processor.
Anyway, this processor delivers dependable performance for everyday tasks like messaging, social media browsing, and web navigation. It also handles multitasking pretty well. But obviously, it cannot suggest it to those who want to game a lot.
On the software front, the V30e runs Funtouch OS 14 based on Android 14.
FunTouch OS is obviously not the cleanest Android skin around, but with some effort, you can uninstall most bloatware on it and also disable other annoyances like spammy notifications. Funtouch OS is also really great with software optimisations.
I recently used a Vivo smartphone as my personal phone for around 4 months, and I can say with confidence that Funtouch OS is less buggy and better optimised than most so-called clean Android skins out there.
Vivo is also promising 3 major Android updates 4 years of security updates - good enough for a phone in this segment.
Vivo V30e Battery Life
The V30e packs a sizable 5500mAh battery. So it is no surprise that if you are a light user, this battery can easily last you two days.
For my medium to heavy usage during this test, I got a screen time of around 8.5 hours, which is quite commendable.
The phone comes bundled with a 44W fast charger. In my testing, the charger was able to fully juice up the phone from dead to 100% in approximately 80 minutes.
While that’s not bad, Vivo could have easily added more powerful charging on this phone keeping its price in mind.
Vivo V30e Review
At a starting price of ₹27,999, the Vivo V30e offers a sleek design, a punchy display and a long battery life. If that’s something you’re looking for, this can be a good option.
But it’s quite hard to ignore how competitive this segment is: you have smartphones offering either periscope cameras or flagship-grade chipsets for around the same price.
So, my advice is to hunt for card offers or offline store discounts before purchasing the V30e.
All in all, it's a reliable smartphone but one that could have been priced a bit more competitively.
Also watch: Motorola Edge 50 Pro review
