Vivo T1 5G Review: An affordable choice to fit in your pocket

Vivo T1 5G Review Summary

Editor’s Rating- 3.5/5

Vivo has launched a new series of smartphones named the T Series aimed towards the young generation. The company claims to give good performance at under 20k price with the devices in this series. The first device has already been launched in India called the Vivo T1 5G. It starts at 16k in India and comes in 2 colors. It has a good processor and a large battery. Is Vivo T1 5G worth your money? Let’s find out.

Price & Availability | Specs | Unboxing | Design | Display | Battery | Camera | Performance | Verdict

Vivo T1 Review: Design

The Vivo T1 5G comes in a Starlight Black color which has a unique gradient for the back panel. The phone changes color when light falls on it and has a flat frame with leveled back. The design is flat all around which makes it feel sleek. It comes with a thickness of 8.25mm which is good. I loved the design and color at the first look itself.

The phone is made of plastic but its looks do not reflect that at all. The feel in hand is comfy and the back panel feels smooth and velvety. It fits into the palm of my hand efficiently and has a matte finish that kept smudges away. It weighs just 187 grams which also makes holding the phone and operating it with a single hand easier.

As for I/O, the Vivo T1 5G comes with a fingerprint sensor underneath the power button that works well. The bottom has a USB Type-C port for charging between a 3.5mm headphone jack and a mono speaker grill. There is a SIM tray on the top with volume rockers on the right. It has a facial recognition feature too. There are thin bezels on the screen and the chin is slightly thicker. At the back, the Camera module sits at the top left corner and as mentioned above doesn’t bulge out much.

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Vivo T1 Review: Display

The Vivo T1 5G comes with a 6.58-inch FHD+ LCD. It comes with a high refresh rate of 120Hz and this could be felt while I was scrolling Instagram or reading a news article. The scrolling was smooth and the content on screen never appeared blurred.

The touch Sampling rate of 240Hz meant the touch was ultra-sensitive and responsive which helped especially during gaming sessions. The display refresh rate is variable and can be changed according to needs, which is good too as it allowed me to save battery by turning it down while tasks like reading and surfing.

The display has thin bezels and peak brightness is also just 460 nits which were not sufficient while I used the phone under sunlight. The device does not relay HDR media from OTT platforms like Netflix which is a bummer too though it comes with Widevine L1 certification. It has Panda Glass for protection which is good for the protection of the device. The visuals on the FHD screen are mostly sharp, crisp, and vibrant which gives an immersive viewing experience.

Vivo T1 Review: Battery

Vivo T1 5G comes with a strong 5000mAh battery with 18W fast charging capability. It takes around 1 hour 45 minutes to charge the battery to 100% which is too long considering the quick charging speeds available these days. For those with medium usage, the battery can last for about 1.5 days as the drainage of the battery is very low with moderate usage. However, if you are a heavy user, then you will need to charge your device at least once every day. I feel a 30-33W fast charger would have been a better choice.

Vivo T1 Review: Camera

The Vivo T1 5G comes with a triple camera setup at the back which includes a 50MP Samsung JN1 Sensor along with a 2MP macro shooter and 2MP depth lens. The camera app is easy to be operated as I could easily switch shooting modes by easy swiping. The primary camera clicks good quality photos during natural light. The photos clicked are full of details, vibrant and shadows seem good too.

The Nighttime quality of pictures is not up to the mark even after I turned on the Super Night Mode. There was too much noise in the clicked images. There were visible grains and at times appear blurry too. Moreover, I had to keep my hand steady for about 5-7 seconds to get a doable picture.

There is no ultrawide camera but a 2MP macro sensor that gave good extreme closeup shots of things like flowers. The smartphone can record videos up to 1080p resolution at 30/60fps with both front and back cameras but the quality of videos can’t be boasted about as the videos appear jittery. There is no OIS or EIS which leads to this shakiness in videos.

Vivo T1 5G has a 16MP selfie camera and I must say it clicked good portraits. The selfies were clear, detailed, and never shaky though my hand did move sometimes. The skin tone looks very similar to the actual and this was good for a person like me who doesn’t like using beautification filters in my photos. Low-light selfies were ok too though a light source nearby obviously made the click better. The subject was highlighted as there was a soft background blur to do so. I felt the selfie camera performed above average.

Vivo T1 Review: Performance

Vivo T1 5G is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chipset along with LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 2.2 storage. Although the processor is ok for normal use it is not as powerful as 765G and that shows while gaming. BGMI which needs high-level and heavy graphics does not perform well on Vivo T1. Battery drainage is slow but the game stutters while running for long durations. This means gamers might not be very happy with this device.

It comes with up to 8GB RAM and 128GB storage and 8GB RAM meant multitasking was smooth. Apps loaded and opened quickly and several apps could be run simultaneously. Even when multiple apps were running in the background, the phone did not have to kill any app in the background because of my usage. There were not any heating issues while long-duration usage.  When I ran Geekbench 5 test on it, the smartphone scored 668 and 1930 in single-core and multi-core tests respectively.

On the software front, the smartphone runs FunTouch OS v12 on top of Android 12. The biggest issue with the software is the large amount of bloatware that comes pre-installed. Apps like Moj, Josh, MX Takatak, ShareChat, Cred, and Facebook come pre-installed. Although it can be removed it can be annoying too. Other than this UI offers some good features that I liked.

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These include customization features, home screen tweaks, a built-in theme store, and more. It also has an in-built screen recorder, gaming mode, and the ability to encrypt apps installed on phone. Vivo has included a screen recording protection feature which I loved as it prevented apps from collecting screenshots or videos while I typed passwords or PINs.

The single speaker at the bottom gave ok sound quality and the fingerprint scanner worked well as well. It has a 3.5mm headphone jack and supports 2 5G bands, which is less. It also supports 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 5.1, and dual-band Wi-Fi.

Review Verdict: Should you buy Vivo T1?

Vivo T1 5G is a smartphone that starts at a price of just Rs. 15,990 so we cannot expect it to have everything possible. The smartphone scores well in the design department and is a decent performer but lags in terms of battery charging time, audio setup, and night photography. It does not have an ultrawide camera lens but does have 5G connectivity. Its display quality is decent too according to the price factor. So, I would say that if you are looking for a stylish looking phone with decent performance and a good selfie camera within your budget Vivo T1 5G can be your choice.