Around late summer this year, the Chinese company Vivo launched another newcomer to its Y-Series, the all-new Vivo Y21. It was supposed to be a mid-range smartphone with many new and emerging technologies.
Color & Price:
The phone comes in 2 colors, which are Diamond Glow and Midnight Blue. My personal favorite color is Midnight Blue. Although the back frame is made of plastic, as is the case with other phones of this range, the sleek design depicting diamond cuts that run elegantly on the back of the phone will just mesmerize you. Although this is not smudge-free, it can be easily cleaned with a piece of cloth, so no worries there. It will be having a price tag of Rs 29000/=. It is a 4G enabled dual sim smartphone.
Camera:
On the back, there is a rectangular pad for the camera that contains a camera setup of 2 cameras. On the front side, the selfie camera comes with a water drop bezel present right in the top-middle of the screen.
The camera system at the back comprises of dual cameras with a LED flash light. 1 wide-angle camera of 13MP and 1 macro-camera of 2MP. The phone has all the picture capturing modes of Normal, Pro, Portrait with Effects, HDR, Google Lens, Live Filter and Live Photo. We went ahead and did some tests to check the quality of the camera on the Vivo Y21. While these were all the advantages and disadvantages, the Vivo Y21 did present a fairly balanced camera feature with its own ups and downs.
RAM & Storage:
Although the phone comes with a 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage, both these memory storages are expandable with 1GB RAM and up to 256GB internal storage with the help of an SD Card. This makes it a good phone in terms of memory capacity.
Display:
On the front is the large 6.51-inch screen, which displays sharp components of the screen. The 6.51-inch large LCD IPS display enables the view the screen content easily. The screen-to-body ratio is 81.8% due to the bezels on the outer edges of the phone, it is still pretty big. The best thing about this screen is that it is easily usable using only one hand.
The 720x1600 pixels resolution screen displays saturated and natural colors. Although there were some down points when the phone was tilted, the phone gives a crisp display and contrast ratio when used in proper way. The performance of the screen under bright sunlight was also good.
Battery:
Another great feature is the huge battery size of 5000 mAh. According to a test, it has been estimated that the battery provides a backup of 1.5 days easily. While this is an amazing feature, vivo has turned it up a notch with its fast-charging option, requiring just 18W of power, which can charge the phone from 0-100% in about 1.5 hours, which is quite exceptional. This adds greatly to the advantage of buying this budget-friendly phone.
Processor/Chipset:
The phone is currently running on an octa-core processor and has a chipset of MediaTek MT6765 Helio P35. The GPU on the Vivo Y21 is the PowerVR GE8320. The phone runs on Android version 11.0, which is a fairly recent technology.
The phone is equipped with MediaTek MT6765 Helio P35 processor which runs on its 4GB RAM. This processor is not considered a good processor in the market due to its lagging problems. This processor is used by smartphones which lie in the low-tier range. This had a great effect since the phone starts to get slow when scrolling the home screen. It was also noted that when multiple applications were opened at once, the phone started to get very slow.
Extra Features:
While these were all the features of the phone, these were put to test and the results yielded were somewhat surprising for this “perfect on paper” smartphone. Talking about the advantages, the phone runs on the then latest Android version 11.0. Vivo has always embedded its phones with an operating system called FunTouch.
This time the FunTouch version 11.1 is incorporated into the phone. This feature has ensured an added function of personalized customizations. It also means that the whole user interface (UI) has been redesigned. There are also new widgets which can be added to the home screen, which makes using this phone, as the name of the operating system suggests, a "fun" experience.
Pros & Cons:
Another advantage of this phone is that Vivo has considered usage of all ages and has introduced a simple launcher which ensures that old people can easily use the phone. This option has a minimalist design and large icons for different options which ensures easy usability. In today’s world, where smartphone companies focus solely on giving maximum features, Vivo’s consideration of old age users has won my heart, so, Kudos to Vivo.
On the bottom, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack that is very useful even when all the Bluetooth audio devices have been introduced in the market. There is Type-C fast charging slot along with a single speaker option. On the side, the phone has the fingerprint scanner embedded lock button that is fast in its response and helps in keeping the data safe. Along with that, the volume buttons are present above the button.
While these were all the advantages, the phone comes with a bunch of disadvantages too, which are more performance-centric. The very first problem that was seen was the presence of Bloatware applications already present in the Vivo Y21. These applications are just memory and performance drainers and do not have any advantage.
It was also observed that the time between application click and application launch was very long. When social media applications like Snapchat and Instagram were used, the loading of filters took a long time and sometimes wouldn't even load. It was also seen that fast scrolling resulted in lags throughout the phone.