Vivo Z1 Pro Price in BD

Vivo is one of India’s biggest and most visible smartphone brands, with a massive offline presence across the country. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the flash sales and price wars that many brands engage in online, and now Vivo wants to get in on that action with its first “online focused” device, the new Vivo Z1 Pro, which will be sold on Flipkart. The company is targeting millennial and Gen Z buyers who want good-looking phones with all the latest capabilities, and the Vivo Z1 Pro specifically promises great cameras, battery life, and processing power for games.

It definitely looks as though Vivo studied all the current market trends when designing the Z1 Pro, and on paper at least, it’s definitely trying to give Xiaomi, Realme, and Samsung a run for their money. We’ve got the brand new Vivo Z1 Pro in for review, and we’re going to see if the features and specifications it boasts of will be enough to earn it a spot on our next list of recommended phones in the sub-Rs. 20,000 space.

Vivo Z1 Pro design

The first thing you’ll notice about the front of the Vivo Z1 Pro is its oversized screen with a hole in the upper left corner for the front camera. This seems to be the next big trend after screen notches of various sizes, and Vivo is right on the ball.

The camera hole isn’t too big and it isn’t really distracting in everyday use. Vivo shipped us our Z1 Pro review unit with a screen protector attached, and unfortunately this serves to highlight the camera hole with an extra ring around it. The plastic film also picked up a couple of nasty scuffs with ordinary use.

As expected for a sub-Rs 20,000 phone these days, the Vivo Z1 Pro features an eye-catching glossy plastic rear panel with a multi-coloured gradient finish. Our review unit was the Sonic Blue version, which is emerald green at the top fading into cobalt blue at the bottom. The colours are rich and saturated, giving this phone a sort of jewel-tone appearance. It also catches the light as you tilt this phone around. The effect is anything but subtle – the Vivo Z1 Pro is definitely designed to be eye-catching from the front as well as the rear.

The gradient carries over to the frame of this phone, and because it bulges outwards a little, you can see the bright colours around the screen when you’re using the Vivo Z1 Pro. Some might like this, but we think it detracts from the borderless screen look that the company was going for. There’s also a more subtle Sonic Black option.

Vivo Z1 Pro specifications and software

The big news with the Vivo Z1 Pro is that this is the first phone in India based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 712 processor. This chip was announced earlier this year as an improvement over the Snapdragon 710, and is built on a 10nm process. It features six 1.7GHz Kryo 360 Silver cores tuned for efficiency and two 2.3GHz Kryo 360 Gold cores for power, along with integrated Adreno 616 graphics and an X15 LTE modem.

Vivo is boasting of up to 10 percent better performance than the Snapdragon 710 and 25 percent better performance than the Snapdragon 660. The company is clearly targeting buyers who enjoy digging deep into specifications to make informed purchase decisions.

You have a choice of three variants with the Vivo Z1 Pro: 4GB of RAM with 64GB of storage (Rs. 14,990), 6GB of RAM with 64GB of storage (Rs. 16,990), and 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage (Rs. 17,990). The screen measures 6.53 inches diagonally and has a full-HD+ 1080×2340 resolution.

The Vivo Z1 Pro also packs a 5000mAh battery and support for Vivo’s own Dual Engine Fast Charging tech. There’s dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5, along with GPS, but no NFC or FM radio. You get all the usual sensors plus a gyroscope and e-compass.

Vivo’s phones run Funtouch OS, a very heavily modified UI for Android 9. A lot of things are changed around, compared to stock Android, and not all of them for the better. You can read about it in great detail in our recent review of the Vivo Y17, since the experience is pretty much identical on both phones, down to the old-fashioned Android UI navigation buttons and the large number of preinstalled apps.

We aren’t fans of the iOS-like Shortcut Center with all the quick settings toggles that you have to pull upwards from the bottom of the screen, or the highly modified Settings app that has even commonly used settings in unusual places. If you like stock Android or similar skins with feature additions such as OxygenOS, you won’t much care for Funtouch OS.

One of the highlights of Funtouch OS is a game enhancement that Vivo calls Game Mode in its promotional materials but is also referred to as Game Cube and Game Box in different places in the UI. This now includes specific optimisations for PUBG Mobile including “4D vibrations and 3D surround sound” as well as a countdown feature that lets you do other things while you wait for your next round to begin.

There’s also an esports mode that can kill all background apps, block notifications, and disable temperature throttling to maximise performance. According to Vivo, more features including voice chat filters are to be added in future updates.