However, beyond performance, the Vivo T1 could be found lacking in certain other areas.
February 15, 2022 / 05:54 PM IST
The Vivo T1 5G has officially been unveiled in India. The new Vivo T1 is an affordable 5G phone that arrives with a Snapdragon 695 SoC, a 120Hz display, a large cooling system, and a 5,000 mAh battery. Vivo’s T moniker stands for ‘Turbo’, which suggests that the handset is designed for gaming. So let’s find out if the Vivo T1’s Rs price tag is justified in this brief hands-on review.
The Vivo T1 has a plastic back and sharp edges as opposed to rounded corners. However, the sharp edges didn’t make the phone any less comfortable to grip, but I prefer rounded edges. Additionally, the phone opted for an old-school waterdrop notch, while screen bezels were thicker than expected. The phone’s matte plastic back resists fingerprints quite well and gives the phone a more refined look. The Vivo T1 is available in Black and Aurora colour options, ours came in the latter.
The triple-camera setup on the back is housed in a small box-shaped camera island, which doesn’t protrude much outwards, ensuring that the phone doesn’t wobble on a surface. Vivo also uses a plastic frame here, although its finish does give the impression of metal. The Vivo T1 has a volume rocker and power button on the right, the latter also doubles as a fingerprint reader. Additionally, there’s a USB Type-C port and headphone jack on the bottom and the SIM tray on the top.
In terms of the display, Vivo has gone with a 6.67-inch FHD+ IPS LCD panel as opposed to a superior OLED screen. The display features a 120Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. It is worth noting that the normal touch sampling rate is 120Hz and only goes up to 240Hz in gaming mode. The screen has a nice 20:9 aspect ratio and a 96 percent NTSC colour gamut. It also comes with an Eye Protection mode.
The display here is great for gaming but isn’t the best for consuming entertainment. Additionally, the bezels are quite sizeable and the waterdrop notch seems a little dated, while brightness can also be found lacking under direct sunlight. On the plus side, the phone does feature Widevine L1 certification. While I wasn’t a big fan of the display here, the 120Hz refresh rate is undeniably impressive and ties into the gaming experience on the device.
Performance is one of the biggest highlights of the Vivo T1. The device is powered by a Snapdragon 695 5G chipset paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The T1 features Extended RAM 2.0, allowing the device to expand RAM up to 4GB. Additionally, you can also expand storage up to 1TB via a microSD card. I tried a few titles on the Vivo T1, including Raid: Shadow Legends, Call of Duty: Mobile, Rage of Destiny, Albion Online, and Star Wars: Hunters.
In my experience, games worked well on high to medium settings, although I think the MediaTek Dimensity 810 chip might be better suited for gaming. In AnTuTu, the Vivo T1 consistently surpassed the 400K mark, making it quite a beast at this price point. The chipset also impressed Geekbench, scoring 671 points in Geekbench’s single-core test and 1,927 points in the multi-core test, putting it on par with the MediaTek Dimensity 810 SoC once again.
For cameras, the Vivo T1 opts for a 50 MP primary sensor with an f/1.8 aperture. The main camera is paired with a 2 MP, f/2.4 bokeh camera and a 2 MP, f/2.4 depth sensor. On the front, the phone features a 16 MP selfie camera with an f/2.0 aperture. The main camera can record 1080p video in 30fps or 60fps. Head on over here to check out some samples.
The main camera on the Vivo T1 retains plenty of detail in daylight with punchy colours, although these are often less representative of the actual scene. And while the 50 MP sensor pumped out sharp images with solid textures, exposure was not always on point. In low light, you can switch to night mode if you use the 6GB or 8GB variant. The night mode does help reduce noise a little in low light but requires a lot of ambient light.
Additionally, photos taken in night mode can be a hit or a miss and noise do tend to creep in even with the mode turned on. Locking down focus in night mode is also difficult and can often result in blurry photos. The macro camera can get you decent to under average results depending on the scenario. The 16 MP front camera on the Vivo T1 produces good selfies in daylight. Check camera samples here.
The Vivo T1 has a large 5,000 mAh battery that can deliver all-day battery life under moderate to heavy usage. The battery can deliver up to five hours of screen time depending on what you’re doing. My usage included 30 minutes of gaming, around an hour of social media browsing, another hour on YouTube, two hours of listening to music, and 15 minutes in the phone’s camera app. However, I still had more than enough battery life to take into the next day. The Vivo T1 also comes with 18W charging support as well as reverse charging via an OTG cable.
Our device came with Android 12-based Funtouch OS 12 out of the box, which was quite a relief considering a lot of budget phones are arriving with Android 11. Apart from some Vivo and Google apps, there were a few third-party apps but a lot of them can be uninstalled. Vivo has incorporated a few gestures and custom features on top of Android 12 features that Google offers.
The T in the Vivo T1 stands for turbo and the Snapdragon 695 chip here doesn’t disappoint. There’s no doubt that the experience here is tailored towards gaming, in many parts due to the Snapdragon 695 chip, 120Hz display, 5000 mAh battery, and the five-layer liquid cooling. And then there’s the extended RAM feature that can take care of apps running in the background. However, the cameras, software, and speaker setup could use improvement.
What’s worst is the clear limitations and lack of some features on the base 4GB model, which forces users to cross the 15K mark for the 6GB model. If the objective here is to provide the best performance under Rs 15,000, then Vivo hits its mark but misses the mark in some key areas. So, if you are looking for a beast of a smartphone for gaming under Rs 15,000, then there’s little doubt that the Vivo T1 is the best pick.