Vivo’s new T-series smartphones are aimed at Gen Z consumers. Vivo emphasizes that such buyers look for well-designed products that boast of good specifications for the price. The company is launching Vivo T1 5G at Rs. 20,000 price range which is causing a stir with the new 5G smartphones from many manufacturers. So would Vivo T1 be the best option for you? I take a closer look at it in this review.
Vivo T1 5G price in India
Vivo T1 15,990 in India starts from Rs. The base variant of this price has 4GB of RAM. There are two more variants of Vivo T1 which offer 6GB RAM and 8GB RAM and are priced at Rs. 16,990 and Rs. 19,990 respectively. Storage is the same for all three, at 128GB. Vivo T1 has been introduced in two color options Rainbow Fantasy and Starlight Black.
Vivo T1 5G Design
The Vivo T1 5G adopts a new design language, which has flat sides all around. This phone is easy to hold, and the rounded corners don’t slide into your palms. Vivo has made the T1 5G 8.25mm thin and its weight of 187g was manageable. It sports a large display with a dewdrop notch, which looks old compared to other phones in this segment that sport hole-punch displays. It has thin bezels on the sides, while the chin is thick.
The T1 5G sports a plastic frame with the power and volume buttons on the right. Vivo The power button has integrated fingerprint scanner, which makes unlocking this phone easy. The left side is bare, while the top houses the SIM tray and secondary microphone. On the bottom, the T1 5G has a 3.5mm headphone jack, USB Type-C port, loudspeaker and primary microphone.
Vivo T1 5G will grab attention in Rainbow Fantasy color
Vivo has made the back completely flat. The camera module sits in the top left corner and doesn’t protrude much. I had the Vivo T1 5G in Rainbow Fantasy colour, and it was a sight to behold. The sparkly iridescent finish changed color when the phone was moved around. This went a long way in hiding fingerprints, but you also get a clear case in the box.
Vivo T1 5G Specifications and Software
Vivo has focused on a few specifications to attract Gen Z buyers. Vivo T1 5G sports a 6.58-inch LCD panel with 120Hz maximum refresh rate and Panda Glass for protection. You also get a peak touch sampling rate of 240Hz when this phone is in game mode. The panel is set to Smart Switch by default, allowing it to automatically switch between 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz refresh rates.
Vivo T1 5G is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC, which also powers competitors such as Moto G71 5G ,Wait) Vivo says that it has also added a vapor cooling chamber to prevent the SoC from overheating when loaded. It also offers a RAM expansion feature that lets you use 1GB of storage as RAM with the base variant, while the higher variant allows 2GB and 4GB of storage respectively.
While 128GB of internal storage feels generous, you can expand it using a microSD card in the hybrid dual-SIM slot. The Vivo T1 packs a 5,000mAh battery and has support for 18W charging which is slow compared to the competition. Vivo bundles an 18W charger in the box.
There is support for two 5G bands, which is much less than the 13 bands on the Moto G71 5G. It also has support for dual 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 5.1, dual-band Wi-Fi and five satellite navigation systems. It doesn’t have NFC, so tap-and-go payments won’t be possible on this phone.
Vivo T1 5G has USB Type-C port, 3.5mm headphone jack and speaker at the bottom
Vivo ships the T1 5G with Funtouch OS running on top Android 12, The UI is very easy to use and feels fresh. Android 12 features like the Privacy Dashboard are now available, and you can see which apps have access to the microphone, camera, your location, and more. Vivo has implemented privacy indicators as well, so you’ll see a green or orange dot in the top-right corner of the screen when the camera or microphone is used by an app. You can allow location access only when an app is in use. Vivo has also added a Screen Capture Protection feature that prevents apps from capturing screenshots or videos while typing a password.
Vivo has made many customizations and you can apply your own style with the Themes app. It lets you choose animations on the device. While all this is great, the phone comes with a lot of bloatware pre-installed like Moj, MX Takatak, ShareChat, Cred, Josh and Facebook. Thankfully, these can be completely uninstalled.
GameSpace lets you access all your games in one place, and gives you a breakdown of the time you spent playing them. When you launch a game it has an ultra game mode. It offers a nifty voice changer feature, and also lets you block incoming notifications and lock the screen brightness. An esports mode does all of these things as well, but also disables gestures and allocates SoC resources based on the current frame rate and temperature.
Vivo T1 5G performance and battery life
In my experience, the Vivo T1 5G was fast and showed no sign of slowing down. I had the 8GB RAM version for this review, and the 4GB RAM expansion option was enabled by default. I could easily multitask between multiple apps, and with my usage, the phone never had to kill an app in the background. Apps loaded quickly. The single bottom-firing speaker was loud, but a stereo setup is always better. Vivo’s side-mounted fingerprint scanner was accurate and required only a single tap to unlock the smartphone. Face recognition also worked consistently during the review period.
After testing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC on a different smartphone, I had a fair idea of its performance. Still, I ran some benchmarks to see where the Vivo T1 5G stands in comparison. It managed to score 414,287 in AnTuTu, which is higher than the Moto G71 5G’s result. However, both the phones performed similarly in most other tests. In Geekbench 5’s single-core and multi-core tests, the T1 5G scored 668 and 1,930 points respectively. It managed 85fps and 18fps in GFXBench’s T-Rex and Car Chase benchmarks, respectively.
The Vivo T1 5G has a hybrid dual-SIM tray
I ran Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) and it defaulted to its “HD” graphics and “High” frame rate settings. It was playable at these settings and I didn’t notice any stutter during gameplay. After 15 minutes, I noticed a 3 percent drop in battery level which is acceptable.
The Vivo T1 5G offered decent battery life and lasted for around two days with light to moderate usage. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted for 18 hours and 48 minutes. Idle battery drain was really low which helped avoid the need to charge this smartphone frequently. There is support for 18W fast charging which is less than what the competition is currently offering. With the supplied charger, the phone got to 33 percent in 30 minutes and 64 percent in an hour, taking about an hour and a half to fully charge.
Vivo T1 5G Camera
Vivo T1 5G has a triple camera system at the back. It has a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. For selfies, it has a 16-megapixel shooter. The camera app is pretty straightforward and easy to use. The shooting mode can be changed easily by swiping. The macro camera toggle is easy to miss, and it would have been better to implement it as a shooting mode.
Vivo T1 5G has a triple camera setup with a primary camera of 50 megapixels.
Vivo claims to offer Super Night Mode for low-light photography and Portrait Styles which are filters that can be applied while taking portrait photos. Surprisingly, these features are missing in the base 4GB variant. This dual camera also misses out on bokeh and instead relies on a single camera.
In broad daylight, the Vivo T1 managed detailed photos. The primary camera’s output had decent colors, and text was legible at a distance. However, it struggled to set the exposure correctly in brighter scenes. You don’t get an ultra-wide angle camera on the Vivo T1 5G, which is a feature that most competing phones have. Close-up photos were decent, however, as those shot in direct sunlight had enhanced colors. Portraits had good edge detection but at times this phone struggled to properly separate the subject from the background. The macro camera allowed me to get up close to objects and captured small details well.
Vivo T1 5G camera sample. Top to bottom: Primary camera, closeup, portrait and macro cameras (tap to view full size)
Low-light shots were strictly average. Colors appeared muted and the primary camera could not capture much detail in the shadows. With Super Night Mode enabled, the phone took 4-5 seconds to take a shot, during which I had to stand still. This resulted in brighter shots with more detail and better colors in the shadows.
Vivo T1 5G low-light camera sample. Top: Low light sample, Bottom: Night mode camera sample (tap to view full size)
Selfies were quite detailed and the T1 5G could manage HDR shots in bright scenes quite well. Low-light selfies with a nearby light source were sharper than in low-light environments. Selfie portraits managed to separate the subject and background well, and there was soft blur in the background.
Vivo T1 5G review selfie camera sample. Top: Daylight Portrait Selfie, Bottom: Low Light Selfie (Tap to see full size)
You can shoot 1080p videos with the primary rear camera as well as the selfie camera. Output was not steady and videos recorded while rotating had noticeable jerks. Low-light footage was a bit grainy and jarring.
Decision
The Vivo T1 5G is the first smartphone in the new T-series, aimed at Gen Z buyers. Vivo has focused on sought-after specifications such as a powerful SoC, 5G, a 120Hz refresh rate display and a large battery. However, to deliver these at an aggressive price, some compromises have been made, such as the dewdrop notch that looks dated, limited 5G band support, no ultra-wide-angle camera, and only 18W charging. The entry-level 4GB RAM variant of the Vivo T1 5G misses out on certain camera features that potential buyers should be aware of.
While some of these factors may make the Vivo T1 5G less attractive to some buyers, the pricing will still make sense for many others. If you want to consider alternatives, Moto G71 5G ,Wait, realme 8s 5g ,Wait), And redmi note 11t 5g ,Wait) are all worth considering.
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