Vivo X90 series
Vivo has recently launched its all-new X90 series in China, which includes three models – the vanilla X90, a superior X90 Pro and the top-notch X90 Pro Plus. Today we will review the latter, Vivo X90 Pro Plus.
The phone comes at a premium price but also packs premium stuff inside it. The cameras are obviously one of the highlights here, and they do perform really well. Another one is the chipset; the Vivo X90 Pro Plus is supposed to be the first smartphone running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC.
The list does not end here. There’s much more to talk about this top-of-the-line Vivo phone. However, will it be able to justify its beefy price tag? Let’s find out in this Vivo X90 Pro Plus review.
Vivo has been doing really well in the market with its camera-centric phones, and the all-new X90 Pro Plus joins the list. The flagship phone packs a bunch of premium features and spec, like a fantastic 50MP main camera, top-notch Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and a premium leather design.
The phone looks gorgeous and feels great in the hands. It packs a 4700mAh battery which supports 80W fast charging. The big 120Hz 6.78 inches AMOLED display offers an amazing viewing experience for day to day usage.
The first thing that came into my mind after holding the phone in my hand was ‘Amazing’. The Vivo X90 Pro Plus looks just stunning and beautiful. Especially the red variant, which I have for the review. There’s also a black colour option if you like a more classy look.
You can tell it’s a premium phone just by taking a glance. The feeling gets magnified as soon as you hold the phone in your hands. I’ll be very honest here; it’s one of the most premium built phones I have used recently. The vegan leather texture on the back is just unbeatable and even better than before.
You see a subtle Vivo branding at the bottom side at a big circular camera island on the top housing four camera lenses. The camera module protrudes a lot and hence the phone wobbles a lot when placed on a flat table.
It’s not the slimmest or lightest phone on the market, but rather a bit hefty phone, weighing about 221 grams. Although, the weight distribution has been done really well. I could use the phone for long durations without feeling the weight. The only time it felt heavy was in my pocket. If you have tight jeans, it’s fine, but anything else like shorts or joggers will not feel much comfortable due to the big size and weight. The edges are made of metal and are curved on the backside with rounded corners to provide a solid grip and in-hand feel.
Talking about ports and buttons, the right side has the power button along with volume rockers. The left side is clean, and the top side has a secondary mic and an IR blaster. Lastly, the bottom side houses the Type-C port, primary speaker, primary mic and SIM tray slot.
The phone comes with an IP68 rating to protect it from water and dust to some extent. Overall, the Vivo X90 Pro Plus has a gorgeous appearance and a great in-hand feel.
The Vivo X90 Pro Plus shines in the camera department as well. It features a quad-camera setup which includes a 50MP main camera + 48MP ultra-wide lens + 50MP Portrait sensor + 64MP telephoto lens. The front side has a 32MP camera for taking selfies.
The main camera takes excellent shots in both daylight and low light. The shots I took were detailed and clear. The images had a good dynamic range, and the colours were vibrant and natural. I really loved the daylight shots I took from the Vivo X90 Pro Plus.
The portrait shots were equally good. The edge detection was on point and the subject was well separated from the background. Background blur was soft and didn’t look like any other cheap phone.
Ultrawide shots were clear and detailed, similar to the main sensor. The dynamic range was also good with nice colour accuracy. There was some noise in the images during low-light shots. Other than that, the ultra-wide shots were just as good as the main camera.
Coming over to the front, the 32MP selfie camera took amazing selfies. The selfies I took were rich in detail and pretty sharp. The skin tones looked close to natural and the dynamic range was good. The portrait selfies were also good with good natural blur in the background. The subject was well-exposed and focused.
The Vivo X90 Pro Plus packs a 4700mAh battery which might seem a bit less compared to the standard 5000mAh battery we see nowadays. However, don’t be mistaken with a slightly lower battery capacity as it performs on par with any other smartphone in this price range.
The phone easily lasts a full day of heavy use and can even survive the second day if you are a light user. A casual user like can expect about 6 hours of screen on time. My usage involved some social media scrolling, playing games, taking pictures and making some calls.
Don’t worry even if you run out of battery, as the fast charging feature makes up for it very well. The Vivo X90 Pro Plus supports 80W of fast wired charging and 50W of fast wireless charging. The 80W fast charger takes about 35 minutes to fully charge the phone from 0 to 100 per cent.
A quick charge of just 15 minutes will juice up the battery to about 50 per cent. Using a compatible wireless charger, you can charge the phone to 100 per cent in under one hour, which is still faster than many other phones.
Vivo X90 Pro Plus features a 2K 6.78 inches AMOLED display with a resolution of 1440 x 3200 pixels. It comes with a refresh rate of 120Hz and 1800 nits of peak brightness. Moreover, it has a 300Hz of touch sampling rate and 1200Hz of instant touch sampling rate, which will come into the role while playing games.
The display is big, clear and rich in colours. The content on the screen is detailed and vibrant. It’s one of the best-quality displays I have used recently. The icons, texts and everything else on the screen were clear and crisp. The 120Hz refresh rate makes everything smooth, be it scrolling through the UI or playing games.
The screen gets plenty bright for both indoor and outdoor use. I could easily use the display even under direct sunlight. I was watching the latest series, ‘Wednesday’, on Netflix and my experience was just amazing.
The colours were punchy and the thin bezels, along with the curved display, just enhanced the overall experience. The deep blacks could be noticed very well and the viewing angles were just as good as the series. Lastly, you will see a small punch-hole cutout on the top which houses the front camera. I did not find it much bothering.
The display is safeguarded by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, which protects it from scratches and minor accidental drops.
Vivo made sure that the X90 Pro Plus does not fall behind anyone when it comes to performance. The phone is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. Yes, you heard it right. This makes the Vivo X90 Pro Plus the first smartphone to pack the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. The flagship chipset is paired with 12GB of LPDDR5x RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 4.0 internal storage.
Now let’s talk about the day-to-day performance of the phone. The X90 Pro Plus easily glides through everyday tasks without any issues. To be honest, it’s more like a rocket which is going above and beyond anything you throw at it.
I did some multitasking and there were no hiccups while switching between the apps. The RAM management is also good as the apps stay in the background even after a while. Thanks to the UFS 4.0 storage, apps open and load up very quickly.
Talking about numbers, the phone scores almost 1.3m in the Antutu benchmark which beats 99 per cent of other phones in the market. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is one of the best graphic-performing chipsets with great stability in the market.
But I had to push the limits of the phone. Hence it was time to play some graphic-intensive games like Genshin Impact, Call of Duty Mobiel and Apex Legends Mobile. Straight up, all the games ran in their highest graphic settings, as I expected.
I did not notice any lags or frame drops, even after playing for an hour. On top of that, the maximum temperature I noticed was around 42° Celsius, which is normal while doing resource-intensive tasks. All thanks to the VC cooling system that keeps the temperature in control.
The phone runs on OriginOS 3, which is based on Android 13. Now, of course, it will arrive in India with FunTouchOS. The UI is packed with features and customisation options like any other Vivo smartphone.
Vivo X90 Pro Plus features a stereo speaker setup, one located at the bottom while the earpiece acts as the secondary speaker. A desiccated secondary speaker would have been much better, but it’s okay. The audio was clear and crisp. However, the output was not so balanced, more of which was coming from the bottom.
The phone comes with 5G connectivity. We don’t know yet what all 5G bands will it support in India. Other connectivity options include: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, IR blaster and NFC.
Vivo X90 Pro Plus comes with a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which is super fast at unlocking the phone. It’s pretty reliable and accurate too. I could unlock the phone with just a quick tap. There’s also a face unlock feature which is faster than before. At the same time, remember that it is less reliable than the fingerprint sensor.
