Vivo V17 PRO Camera Review

The Vivo V17 Pro is currently the most high-end phone Vivo has in the Kenyan market. It will cost you about KES. 41,000 to pick one up. And it has a sophisticated camera system. At the back, you get 4 cameras, and at the front, you get a pop-up system with a 32MP main lens and an 8MP ultra-wide lens.

The setup at the back is very eye-catchy. Whenever I had the phone out, people really wanted to know which device it is because of all the lenses. No this isn’t the first phone I’ve had with a quad setup. Its arrangement rather is what makes it standout. Each lens is separate, and with the white finish, each lens really stands out.

The back cameras include a 48MP main lens. It has an f/1.8 aperture. The ultrawide lens is an 8MP lens with an f/2.2 aperture. The next lens is a 13MP telelphoto lens with only 2X optical zoom. There’s also a 2MP depth sensor to help with portraits.

The pop-up selfie setup is also very unique. Most people are used to a small block popping up and sliding back. This one is a whole rectangular block. That’s because it has a dual setup. It was always a wow factor for many people interacting with the device.

Like all phones with pop-up cameras, the camera will slide back in when the phone falls down, or when someone applies force. It didn’t seem fragile at all in my use. I didn’t think of it like something one could destroy easily. There are no visible gaps around the sides that could let in dust. But that speaker grill included in the pop-up mechanism could gather dirt and dust on long use, and end up having issues. But that’s only a problem for careless people. I don’t think anyone buying a 40k phone would risk being careless with it.

Camera Interface:

I have issues with Vivo’s software. It doesn’t really understand how users interact with their devices. And this is particularly evident with the Camera UI. You’ll find it hard to switch between lenses if you’ve never used a Vivo phone before. Things that should be obvious are hidden. For example, finding the option for Bokeh will take you over 4 minutes if you’ve never interacted with FuntouchOS. And Portrait Mode isn’t actually Bokeh Mode. Seems it is for FaceBeauty. Plus each mode is independent of each other, so you have to switch between both.

The good thing is that Bokeh looks good. Really good. Edge detection is great. The background in most of my use wasn’t exaggerated.

Feature Packed:

There’s AI portrait framing, scene detection, watermarks, and even gender detection when in portrait mode. There’s also Pro Mode for everyone who wants more power in the pics they take. You can also choose to take full 48MP photos under the settings.

If you want to scan documents, there’s doc mode for that.

You can shoot 4K videos at 30fps, but weird thing is that the device comes with default set at 720p. Why? You can also shoot 1080p videos at either 30fps or 60fps. You also have the option choose between H.264 and H.265 video codecs.

Take on pictures:

• Saturation: Vivo’s software really loves saturated pictures. Each pic is really saturated. And while that could be a great thing for some people, others just won’t like it.
• Fast: you don’t get to wait long for a picture to be taken. Unless you’re taking 48MP full pics, or you’re taking night shots.
• Zoom is quite good: The digital zoom isn’t too bad. One can still make out whatever text or images are in the pic as long the font is big enough.

So let’s see some of the pics I took with the Vivo V17 Pro. Remember these pictures have been greatly compressed when being uploaded online. Some of the pics are over 4MB, but here they’re all about 250kb so that things work. I think the Vivo V17 Pro has some pretty good cameras, and I believe I didn’t need to work hard at all to find good pics. These were all basic point and shoot pictures. And they’ve all turned out quite beautiful. Share your thoughts.

Close-up:

Night:

Day:

Zoom

Extras:

Vivo V17 PRO Specifications: