Vivo V3 Max: Checks all boxes, yet...

It's impressive how Chinese smartphone players are getting aggressive in the Indian market. Vivo too has recently launched two new smartphones in the Indian market - the V3 and V3 Max, priced at Rs 17,980 and Rs 23,980, respectively. We put to test the latter and here's our two cents about this new device.

The design language for the Vivo smartphones comprises a massive display at the front along with a metallic finish rear. The V3 Max too has been built on the same lines. There is a 5.5-inch full HD display dominating the front with the camera and sensor sitting on the top and the navigation keys at the bottom.

It has a metal unibody with a slightly raised camera on the top left and the fingerprint sensor sitting in the middle. There are curved edges on the corner and the panels have the necessary controls and ports including hybrid SIM slot on the left, 3.5-mm jack on the top, volume and power keys on the right, and charging port along with speakers on the bottom.

Belonging to the 5.5-inch display smartphones, for my hands, the Vivo V3 Max was slightly broad. The device has 7.58-mm thickness and weighs 168 gm. The full HD display at full brightness looks good and has good sunlight legibility, too.

However, the navigation keys below the display are not backlit but once you get used to the device, reaching them at night will not be difficult. The fingerprint scanner is placed at just the right position, where the finger rests and it works flawlessly, too.

The Vivo V3 Max is powered by the 1.8-GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor and is paired with 4 GB of RAM. My review unit had 32 GB of internal storage with 23.61 GB user accessible. The phone runs on Android 5.1.1 with Vivo's FunTouch OS.

Notification bar - where all the notifications appear - can be dragged from the top. But shortcuts and screen brightness can be accessed by sliding up from the bottom. All the apps are placed on the multiple homescreens and there isn't any app launcher. It launches apps quickly and was smooth while navigating.

While playing and using maps for turn-by-turn navigation, the phone started heating up a bit.

A couple of times, the phone froze while exiting the app. The speaker grill at the bottom offers loud sound, enhancing video watching experience. The 13-MP camera onboard packs in various modes including HDR, Panorama, Night, FHD display, PPT, motion track, professional, slow and fast.

The professional mode offered various manual settings that one can play around with. For those who do not wish to use the manual mode, the HDR mode worked well. There is also a face beauty setting for capturing faces. The images captured were crisp and offered good details. There wasn't any lag while using the camera.

The Vivo V3 Max packs in a 3,000-mAh battery that lasted me a day with heavy usage.

Bag it or Junk it: While the Vivo V3 Max is a good device, the recently launched Xiaomi Mi 5 for Rs 25,000 wins over this one.

Price: Rs 23,890

Rating: 3/5

Plus: Screen, FingerPrint scanner

Minus:  Heating issue