Vivo Y95

The Vivo Y95, priced at Rs. 15,990, is Vivo’s answer to Nokia’s 6.1 Plus and Redmi Note 6 Pro. The phone retains a design similar to the Vivo X21 and V11 Pro, featuring sleek rounded edges and a water-drop notch design.

Vivo Y95 Price in India

Arriving as a major competitor to the Redmi Note Series, the Vivo Y95 gets slightly underpowered internals. Being set at a price tag of ₹14,990, the device comes with a single 4+64GB variant with Aurora Red, Nebula Purple and Starry Night colour options to choose from. The Vivo Y95, although with a decent configuration, should definitely be given a second thought while buying, especially considering what other brands are offering at similar price points.

The Y95 goes with the tried and tested design – a water drop notch in the front in order to maximise screen space, a curved back, and edged rounded corners in order to present a comfortable grip. Although the phone is a plastic body, it doesn’t feel cheap in the hand due to its impressive build quality. And as is customary with most new smartphones, the dual colour back panel gives it a high-end premium look. The phone is comfortably weighted at 163.50 grams due to its heavy battery capacity.

The rear features the dual camera setup, the fingerprint scanner, and an engraved Vivo logo. The speakers, USB port, and the 3.5 mm headphone jack sit on the bottom. Considering the price of the phone, the bezel edges on the sides and the chin are surprisingly thin.

The screen real estate on the Y95 is decent, with a 6.2-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 720×1520 pixels and a density of 270 PPI. Although the aspect ratio is a large 19:9, the display does not feel as sharp because the company opted to go for an HD+ display instead of going FHD+. The lower pixel density does not really help as well. The output is good, with well-balanced colours and saturation. So are the viewing angles, which do not produce any distortions. The screen is well-lit and remains perfectly legible even in bright sunlight.

Vivo has accounted for how memory hungry the users of today are and the Y95 offers a whopping 64 GB of internal memory space. A dedicated memory card slot can further extend your needs up to 256 GB. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 chipset with an octa-core CPU clocked at 1.9 GHz. This is the latest in Snapdragon’s 400-series, and coupled with 4GB of RAM, the device handles the day-to-day apps with elegant ease. As it remains a daily usage phone, however, there is a slight delay in working when other apps are taking up background space. The graphics needs of the Y95 are handled by an Adreno 505. The phone runs light games with ease, however, graphic intensive games would require you to tone down the graphics settings to the lowest in order to avoid large frame drops and lags.

The phone supports Android 8.1, Nougat, overlaid by the FunTouch OS 5.2. The OS is intuitive and runs smoothly, supporting both the Android features as well as carrying unique Vivo features. It, however, comes preloaded with a lot of bloatware that you might want to get rid of. However, that does not take away from the experience of running the phone. It just feels like a minimised derivative of an iOS.

The Y95’s highlight as a mid-range smartphone is its camera. However, the company has touted the 20-megapixel (f/2.0) front camera more than the dual rear camera, and it is the real star of the show.

Powered by AI recognition, the front camera is a wonderful selfie shooter with an image quality better than the rear camera. The photos are sharp, the colours natural and well saturated. Turning on the AI Beauty Mode might be a little overkill for the photographs as the output tends to be a little too sharp, giving it a slightly unnerving unnatural feel. Along with that, the beauty mode also somewhat helps in smoothing out the facial features and enhancing the complexion.

The rear features a dual-camera setup with a 13 megapixel and a 2-megapixel image sensor with f/2.2 and f/2.4 respectively. The smaller secondary sensor works to capture the depth-of-field information in order to be able to produce a bokeh mode, as seen in DSLR photographs. It also supports face detection and HDR. The rear camera is no outstanding feat. It works well in daylight, featuring correct colours, that are punchy, vibrant and well saturated. The image quality is well detailed and the subjects remain sharp. The camera seems to lose out a lot in low light conditions where noise and grain start creeping up in photographs. Details are lost, and the pictures aren’t satisfyingly bright. The AI featured in the rear camera does its best to minimise the grains, and fix other shortcomings in post-processing.

To support the plethora of features on the phone, Vivo has equipped the Y95 with a stellar 4,030 mAh battery. The phone delivers well, even during moderate to high usage. You can safely go through your day without worrying about the charge left in your phone. The battery will make the phone last till the end of the day.

The Vivo Y95 comes up as a smartphone that is great for the everyman. The phone offers decent features at a somewhat questionable price. Considering there are phones that do a lot more for a lot less, the Y95 joins the gang of the daily-user base phones.