Vivo X21 is the latest flagship smartphone by Vivo with its innovative, in-display fingerprint sensor. Vivo has taken the innovation to the new level with this feat. Apart from it, Vivo X21 offers 6.28-inch Super AMOLED display, Snapdragon 660 and 6GB of RAM. All the specifications are top notch to give users a perfect flagship to buy. After a month of usage, here’s our review of the Vivo X21.
Design and Build:
Vivo X21 features a Full display design with a notch, similar like the most of Android smartphone came this year. The rear panel has a glass-back with a small cavity for the rear camera setup. The glass-back has a semi-transparent glossy body which is smooth and slippery. Yet the Vivo X21 offers a premium finishes with shiny glass back.
The glossy and slippery glass-back joins the curvy metal edges which are also rounder, making it even more slippery. But thanks to the Rubber Cover provided by Vivo gives better grip. The rear panel sports a Dual Camera setup along with a LED flash at the top left. A small Vivo logo is also engraved under the glass panel.
The front panel sports all the sensors a front camera setup at the notch. The full view display with small bezels gives the maximum screen to body ratio to the users. All the buttons, Power Key, and the Volume controllers are placed on the right side of the edge. The SIM card tray is placed at the bottom side of the edge along with the microUSB and Speaker Grill.
Vivo X21 offers a good design but the 6.28-inch screen makes it a bit bigger to be used by single hand. The smartphone is sturdy and durable.
Display:
Vivo X21 features a 6.28-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display with 1080 x 2280 pixels resolution and 19:9 aspect ratio. The display offers punchy colors with great clarity. The icons and animations offer good color contrast and vivid looks. The viewing angles of the device are good and it offers good views. Sunlight readability works great too with the help of adaptive brightness control.
Specifications:
Vivo X21 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset paired with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and Adreno 512 GPU. It has 128GB of onboard storage which can be expanded up to 256GB via Hybrid Slot. It supports dual nano SIM with 4G VoLTE support. For additional security, Vivo added Face Unlock feature along with the in-display fingerprint sensor. Other connectivity options are Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS, micro USB OTG.
On the software section, Vivo X21 runs on Android 8.1 Oreo-based FunTouch OS 4.0 on the top of it. The UI offers good customizations and themes option to craft the inner settings as you wish. The bloatwares are less on the smartphone. The selection of micro USB over Type-C and we hope to see an upgrade for the upcoming smartphones.
Performance:
The octa-core Snapdragon 660 chipset offers good performance along with the 6GB of RAM. All the apps ran smoothly without any lag. The multitasking ability of the smartphone also seems great as it handles 10-15 regular apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Gmail, Youtube and others very easily. The touch response is fast and helps to open the apps faster.
The heavy gameplay is easily handled. We played high-end games like Asphalt 8, Modern Combat 5, Shadow Fight 2 and PUBG. All the games run smoothly without any lag or display errors. We didn’t get any heating issue on the smartphone.
Benchmarks section of Vivo X21 scored the good points. It scored 138616 in AnTuTu while the Geekbench score was 1584 in Single-Core and 5605 in Multi-Core.
The new Face Unlock feature works great and it can unlock the smartphone even in lowest lighting condition. The Fingerprint Sensor is another option if somebody wants to skip face unlock. The in-display fingerprint is great and it unlocks the smartphone quickly. The position is fixed and you’ve to press the specific area a bit pressure to unlock the smartphone. As we know it is the first generation of the in-display fingerprint, it will get better with ages. It also has 3 types of fingerprint animation.
The Audio and Video output are impressive by the smartphone. Vivo X21 offers AK4376A Headset with DeepField Sound Effect for better entertainment. The provided headset works great and provides an all-rounder performance.
The 4G VoLTE connectivity on the Vivo X21 works fine. We used Airtel as Primary and Jio as our secondary SIM and we didn’t find any type of call drop issue. Both the SIM’s worked efficiently with good signal strength.
Battery:
Vivo X21 is backed by 3200mAh of the battery. While testing the battery abilities, we got 7 and half hours of battery life in our Loop Video Test. With regular usage, the Vivo X21 offers a full day battery life with moderate usage but when we played games and watch movies the battery drops quickly. It offers 8 hours of battery life with intensive usage which involves usage of camera usage, 4G VoLTE, gaming and video playback. The battery seems efficient to deliver battery life of 8-12 hours as per your usage. The battery is accompanied by Dual-Engine Charge technology which offers fast charging. It helps to fully charge the smartphone within 2 and half hours.
Camera:
The Rear panel sports a dual camera setup of a 12MP primary sensor with dual LED Flash, f/1.8 aperture, and 5MP Sony secondary sensor, f/2.4 aperture. The rear camera captures good images with great color contrast. The captures images were vibrant colorful. All the details inside the captured images were great. The low light performance of the camera is good, the LED helps to capture good images in low light.
The Front camera consists of 12MP with Sony sensor, f/2.0 aperture, IR Fill Light, 3D Mapping. It captures good selfies with great details. However, we find out the selfies to be a bit toned up as the brightness level bit higher than the original conditions. It also comes with several AR Stickers to make images more creative. Both the camera, front, and back is powered by Dual Pixel Technology.
The Camera app is great and offers good customizations. There are several useful modes and settings which helps the user to capture the perfect moments. Other than the in-display fingerprint and display, the camera is another highlight feature for the smartphone.
Gizmo Verdict:
In terms of innovation, Vivo X21 clearly takes the lead with the in-display fingerprint sensor technology. The Vivo X21 is pioneered in camera, battery, display and performance. It might feel costly to some people but new innovation comes at a little higher price.
