Spec sheet alone does not matter. What you really need is a phone that can take great photos quickly, or super unique photos, very easily. Most importantly, it doesn’t force you to babysit your battery with a power bank. Well, that is what the new vivo V60 promises to fix at just RM1,999. But is this the upgrade you’ve been waiting for, or just another mid-range phone pretending to be more?
Unboxing
Let’s start with the unboxing. Now, how many times have you opened a brand-new phone box and thought, “Oh, great. No charger again. Thank you, Apple. Thank you, Samsung.” Well, vivo actually includes everything in a box: a 90W flash charger, a USB-A to USB-C cable, and even a TPU case. So, yes, you can literally buy the phone and use it immediately.
Cameras
Since the V series from vivo is all about the cameras, let’s first start with that. This has a ZEISS-collaborated triple camera setup with a 50MP Sony IMX 766 wide, a 50MP Sony IMX 882 telephoto, which is the same as the vivo X200, and an 8MP ultrawide lens, together with a 50MP front camera as well. So, yes, the numbers are very impressive for a phone within this price factor.
Starting off with the Front cameras, while many companies have sort of given up on the front cameras, making it a sort of an afterthought since they are usually looking to have the best rear cameras, the good news is that the selfies here are sharp and detailed with great dynamic range, while also being wider. The overall picture is also nicely processed, no plastic skin filter nonsense which looks very edited or even unnatural. So, selfie photos on this, are really nice.
The same can be said for the Main camera as well. The photos are rich and juicy. The outputs are also very Instagram ready and reliable without needing to edit any of the shots after taking any pictures.
But the real magic starts when you see the Telephoto lenses, which by the way, not only digitally zooms up to 100x, but vivo has also selectively put five different focal lengths for the portrait mode over here at 23mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 100mm. All with the ZEISS bokeh effect, which you have plenty to choose from, similar to the flagship X200 too. The results over here are just outrageous.
If you go into the photo mode and look at the bottom, there’s the Film Camera mode for you to take some unique film-style photos with more film-like looks over here as well, featuring a different watermark in the photos.
Of course, if you go into the “More” tab in the camera app, there are more features over here, including underwater photography, which I couldn’t test because I can’t swim and I have a phobia of drowning. Yeah, true story…
But what about the Night Mode then? Because most smartphones still struggle with low-light conditions, especially a phone within this price range.
While flashlights are good for just capturing something, the vivo V60 has the Aura Light, which is a staple for their recently released phone. This is basically a built-in ring light at the back with adjustable intensity and color temperature within the camera app.
Based on this photo side-by-side, you can see that the one which has the Aura Lighting looks softer and is evenly spread out as compared to a typical flash which just focuses and brightens your nose.
But besides the portrait mode type of shots, all of the lenses performed very well, from the Ultrawide; even the 10x zoom or 243mm was amazing.
Speaking of being ready for social media when it comes to taking photos, the Micro Movie feature was also nice because it had some built-in templates for you to easily create and edit free movie compilation with up to 4K 30fps recording for your rear cameras and the front cameras as well.
So, this does prove that the collaboration between vivo and ZEISS has been really elevated further, not just for their flagships, but also even for the baseline V series as well.
Design & Build
As for the phone’s design and build quality, the unit that I have is called the Summer Blue, which almost looks like white with a slight tint of blue.
But the Malaysian hero color here is called the Berry Purple, which looks amazing where honestly it feels like Ribena had a fashion collab, which looks really amazing and I love.
This particular phone is 200g in terms of the overall weight, which does sound heavy, but this has 6,500 mAh of battery inside. Even with that weight, it’s only 7.7mm thin, so scrolling IG or TikTok for hours doesn’t feel like wrist day in the gym.
It’s also IP68 and IP69 rated where there’s also the one-tap dust and water removal that gives you that sort of comfort when using the phone outdoors or even in the rain.
Then, sliding the phone in and out from your pocket also feels very much smoother too thanks to the subtle camera bump on top. But the only catch of this particular camera bump is the fact that it does wobble a bit if you type it on the surface.
So, I would just recommend just holding the phone and typing and scrolling to your heart’s content since it’s one of the most comfortable phones I’ve ever held.
Display
This has a 6.77-inch 120 Hz AMOLED HDR10+ Quad Curved Display with a new Diamond Shield Glass, which vivo claims to be the most drop-resistant in their V series ever. And should I challenge their claims? Absolutely not, because it looks as solid as how they claim it is.
But this curved display somehow makes it look like it’s a little more bezelless than it actually is. So, I dug deeper and found out that vivo has used this golden curvature, which is exactly 41 degrees. So, it’s curved enough to blend in with the phone’s frame while also keeping the durability intact since it’s not fully curved. And this also means that it has mistouch prevention as well.
Then as for the display, you can see that it looks really nice and how you expect a vivo phone to be. But on another quick note, the stereo speakers on this were also really good as well.
It also comes with HDR certification on YouTube with Widevine L1 playback specification and HDR10 HEVC on Netflix. The peak brightness value is at a massive 5,000 nits, but 1,500 nits of High Brightness Value. So, this shines in outdoor conditions as well. Even when taking videos or photos during the day or even in a bright daylight, it didn’t drop the brightness at all.
Software
Once you come out from the camera app, this comes with a Funtouch OS 15 based on Android 15 where the software feels lighter.
The smoothness that it brings was also really great as well where closing and opening apps are also smooth with fluid transitions. The overall UI is pretty polished even with the AI features included too, with some basic AI that you expect a phone to have like adjusting the frame, repair through the AI Photo Enhancer, AI Eraser, and more.
Going back to the camera app real quick, there’s one unique AI visual feature which you can take super easily and effortlessly over here. If you go into the portrait mode, you can get AI to get all four seasons in your photos or anything that you take between spring, summer, autumn, and winter as well. So, you can make your photos look like autumn or winter even in Sunway Lagoon or Sunway Pyramid here in Malaysia!
So, yeah, Funtouch OS has really come a long way from being just a simple UI or if you want to go further or above, you can also do it too.
It also comes with 4 years of OS updates and 6 years of security updates where vivo says that you can definitely get up to 5 years of smooth experience, which was great for a phone within this price range once again.
Performance
As for performance, this has the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 with 12 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and it uses a UFS 2.2 storage. And because this has a proper larger vapor chamber cooling as well, using it daily was really good and I didn’t notice any jitters or any sort of a lag in day-to-day use, even while gaming as well.
And while the chipset doesn’t support the highest graphics, but over on Genshin Impact, they stayed cool with just a little warm towards the end of my 30 minute gameplay. And yes, the overall comfort when I was gaming was really great since the overall form factor was really nice as mentioned earlier.
Battery
But the biggest selling point of this vivo V60 is of course the 6,500 mAh battery, which uses the BlueVolt Silicon Carbon tech with up to 4 years of battery health. Two days of use? Check. At worst I ended Day 2 with just 28% left still, and that is very rare in the year 2025.
Something that this phone’s battery is also capable of, which a lot of other phones don’t, is the fact that this has bypass charging while gaming and this can be manually turned on from the ultra gaming mode so your battery doesn’t degrade as fast.
This also comes with a 90W charger as seen in the box earlier which roughly takes about an hour to charge to 100%.
But if you’re lazy like me, it also has a very unique feature called Super Battery Saver mode where it allows you to use up to 8 useful apps. And for God’s sake, please don’t choose TikTok as being useful because it is not “useful”.
Okay, so this mode turns your whole UI into dark mode and has some inner processing to make sure that your battery consumption is low. Other than that, there’s also a toggle for Battery Life Extender which only allows you to answer or make phone calls.
So yes, vivo is actually being more thoughtful with the easy-to-toggle features just to make sure that you go through your days so much easier.
Conclusion
So, who is this vivo V60 really for? Well, if you want a phone that takes great photos instantly, lasts 2 days easily, and charges very quickly, and comes with everything inside of the box, this is it.
While it’s not built for maximum gaming, but with a price of only RM1,999, it delivers more where it matters to you. And that is the whole point, my friend. Not spec sheets, not marketing fluff, just solving everyday frustrations that you actually care about.
[Watch the full video on YouTube here]
Related:
