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vivo V29 5G Review

Written By Jose Altoveros
Published • September 26th, 2023
Gadget ReviewsMobile
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Earlier this year, vivo Philippines launched the V27 series. It featured the brand’s new Aura Lighting system, which made taking photos in almost any environment easier. At the same time, it packed a powerful chipset all for a very affordable price.

If you missed out or held out on buying the vivo V27 series, well don’t worry. vivo has now launched the all-new V29 5G. It basically takes everything that we liked about the V27 series, and improves on it.

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There’s a new, more powerful chipset, faster charging, and an upgraded version of the well-loved Aura Light.

But if you just bought the V27 series earlier this year, is the upgrade worth it? Well, read on to find out.

Table of Contents

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Design and Construction

At first glance, the vivo V29 5G looks nearly identical to the V27 Series, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The V27 is a great-looking phone, and it seems vivo didn’t feel the need to change it with the new V29.

Perhaps the most obvious design change can be found in the camera housing. The V27 previously had the camera Aura Light located beside the triple rear camera lenses. In the V29, the new Aura Light 2.0 is now located at the bottom. The lens at the bottom is now found at the side together with another flash.

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While the Aura Lighting 2.0 might look identical to its predecessor, there are more changes to it which I’ll discuss in detail later.

Aside from the changes to the camera housing, one other change vivo made to the V29 5G is the color choices of the phone itself.

Our initial review unit is in the Starry Purple, and it looks great. There’s also another color available called Magic Maroon (pictured above) that we got to try out, and it looks really nice too. In fact, we’re torn between choosing which one looks better, but what do you think?

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As mentioned earlier, the rest of the phone looks identical to before, including the beautiful glass back panel. It’s still very slim and lightweight, making it easy to fit pockets and carry around.

The volume and power buttons are found on the right side. At the bottom, you’ll find a USB-C port can be found along with a downward-firing loudspeaker and the dual-sim card slot.

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Display and Multimedia

Once you start up the phone, you’re once again greeted by a large 6.78-inch curved screen with 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ colors. However, the V29 5G does come with a higher resolution display at 2800 x 1260px.

Like before, you still get beautiful colors, high contrasts, and deep blacks. There’s also some adjustability as well, which you can play with in the settings.

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This makes it great for watching shows and playing games with the screen’s high refresh rate and nice colors. You even have a loudspeaker like before, making it great when watching videos with friends.

More importantly, the colors are quite accurate too. This will make it easy to edit all of the photos and videos you’ll be taking with this phone.

On the vivo V29, there’s also improved eye protection to shield your eyes from harmful blue light. This makes it easier to use for longer periods of time.

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With the high refresh rate screen, it feels nice even when you’re just going through the menu. But you’ll fully utilize this when you’re playing games such as Mobile Legends or Genshin Impact.

While the screen now has a higher resolution, it seems they didn’t change the loudspeaker from before. It’s still a mono loudspeaker which is decent at best. A few improvements could have made watching videos and playing games without earphones more enjoyable.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering our unit of the V29 5G is a Snapdragon 778G chipset along with 12GB RAM and up to 512GB of internal storage. If you need even more RAM, users can virtually expand RAM further by up to 8GB.

It may not be the most powerful or newest chipset on the market, but it’s still capable. Although I do wish vivo fitted a more powerful chipset to improve performance more.

All-in-all, you can play the latest games available on mobile. These include Mobile Legends, Honkai Star Rail, and even Genshin Impact. While the first two games ran well, we did have to tone down the settings on Genshin to have smoother gameplay.

The phone doesn’t heat up too much too even when you’re playing for extended periods of time. You can even let multiple apps run in the background, and you’ll still be fine.

To give you a better idea of how capable the phone is, check out the benchmark scores below.

Benchmarks Result:

Antutu – 601400
Antutu Storage Test- 51791
S.Read- 12056
speed: 1050.7MB/s
S.Write- 9910
Speed: 863.7 MB/s
R.Access 29825
Read Speed: 543.0 MB/s
Write Speed: 361.0 MB/s

3d Mark – 2473

Geekbench 6
Single: 1024
Multi: 2927
Geekbench 6 GPU Vulkan- 2427
Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL- 2125
PC work 3.0 performance- 9559

Camera

While you can game and multi-task with the vivo V29, my favorite feature of this smartphone is still the camera. The triple rear camera itself appears to be a carryover from the V27 5G, featuring a 50MP main lens, 8MP ultrawide, and a 2MP monochrome sensor. Like before, these lenses capture great photos in almost all situations.

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But the main upgrade would be the Aura Light 2.0 system which has been vastly improved. Unlike before, you can now change the color temperature of the aura lighting to either cool or warm.

This can give your photo a different vibe depending on the color temperature you set. Together with the Aura Light’s capability to perfect the lighting conditions, you’re sure to capture great images no matter the lighting condition you’re in.

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Just take a look at how great the photos came out with the new Aura Light 2.0. And for reference here’s a photo of the same area without Aura Light turned on. It’s a big difference right?

With the V29, you can also capture better video as well with the improved OIS+EIS image stabilization software. When recording videos at night, there’s even Super Night Video to help brighten up the scene when shooting in places with little to no lighting. Like before, the phone can capture video at a maximum of 4K@30FPS.

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To help you capture even more content, vivo also introduced more modes such as food mode to make your meal look more delicious. There’s also supermoon mode where you can take advantage of up to 10X zoom.

For content creators, you also get a 50MP front camera, making it great for taking group selfies. It also has EIS stabilization for recording video. With a somewhat wide-angle view, you fit even more people in the frame. More importantly, they won’t look blurred.

Here are some of the photos and videos we took to show you what kind of content you can capture with the V29.

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OS, Apps, and UI

The vivo V29 5G runs on Android 13 skinned with Funtouch 13. It’s quite fun and easy to use, and there are even various customization options for the home screen, lock screen, animations, and more to suit your aesthetic.

One thing I’ve always liked about vivo smartphones is that there isn’t too much bloatware pre-installed. In fact, some of the third-party apps you find in the phone are the apps you will actually end up using.

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Battery and Connectivity

If you plan on capturing content the entire day, the vivo V29 5G is more than capable of doing so with its 4,600mAh battery pack. It might be a bit smaller than the usual 5,000mAh we see in smartphones in this segment, but it does last quite a long time.

And when you do need to recharge the phone, it won’t take long. The phone features 80W FlashCharge when using the supplied cable and charger. This means less downtime and more time using the phone.

Based on PC Mark’s battery test, the vivo V29 lasted 15 hours and 35 minutes.

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Conclusion

With all of the changes, the vivo V29 5G takes everything we liked about the V27 Series and takes it one step further. As for the price, it didn’t change too much either.

The all-new V29 retails starts at PHP 24,999 for the 12GB+256GB variant, making it the same price as its predecessor. Meanwhile, the 12GB+512GB variant that we have retails for PHP 26,999.

If you’re interested, the phone is now on available in all vivo Concept Stores, dealers, and kiosks nationwide, as well as on Shopee, Lazada, TikTok, and the vivo Philippines official website.

So what do you think of the vivo V29? If you weren’t able to buy the V27, is this something you would consider? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

What we liked:
Beautiful Design
Updated Aura Light Camera
Still affordable

What we didn’t like:
Could have used a more powerful chipset
Mono-loudspeaker

vivo v29 5G specs:
6.78-inch AMOLED display @ 1260 x 2800 pixels
120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+
Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G chipset
Octa-core CPU up to 2.4GHz
Adreno 642L GPU
12GB RAM
256GB/512GB storage, no card slot
50MP f/1.88 main camera, PDAF, OIS
8MP f/2.2 ultrawide
2MP f/2.4 monochrome
4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps video
50MP f/2.0 front-facing camera
Dual-nano SIM, 5G
WiFi-6
Bluetooth 5.2
GPS
NFC
USB Type-C 2.0
Fingerprint (under display, optical)
Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
Android 13, FunTouch OS 13
Li-Po 4600mAh battery, 80W SuperVOOC fast charging
Starry Purple, Magic Maroon
Dimensions: 164.2 x 74.4 x 7.5 mm
Weight: 186 grams