Vivo’s new T3 5G handset, priced at Rs. 19,999, is aimed at a highly competitive budget segment, which has seen a lot of new products in the last two to three months. Vivo has been among the top performers in the Indian market for a while now. Let’s try and see if the T3 packs enough to be a considerable option for its price tag or not.
The device features a crystal-patterned back panel with a dual camera plus flicker sensor. It has rounded edges and flat sides, with the right side carrying the volume buttons and Power/Lock key near the middle. The top has the secondary mic, while the bottom houses the dual SIM card and microSD card tray, primary mic, USB type C port, and outlet for loudspeakers. The other outlet for speakers is next to the ear-speaker grille on the display, which is tucked next to the punch-hole front camera. The phone comes in Crystal Flake and Cosmic Blue color options and is IP54-rated for water and dust resistance. Despite its 6.67-inch display with thin but asymmetrical bezels, the phone weighs about 185 grams, making it comfortable to hold and non-slippery to carry around.
The 6.67-inch full HD+ (1080x2400) AMOLED display supports up to 120Hz refresh rates. It is bright enough to be usable under very bright sunlight with the brightness cranked up above 60%. The display has decent viewing angles and punchy colors on the default color mode. However, the professional color mode offers more accurate color reproduction. Users have the option to enable high refresh rates or choose dynamic refresh rates from the display settings. The display does a good job of handling high-resolution videos in terms of details and colours.
The phone features a dual camera system, including: Main Camera: 50MP (f/1.79) and Bokeh Camera: 2MP (f/2.4). The main camera excels in capturing detailed shots in daylight conditions, exhibiting good dynamic range and color reproduction. However, the portrait mode's performance, even in favorable lighting conditions, falls short of expectations for this price range. It's worth noting that the flicker sensor does provide some assistance in mitigating ambient light effects, especially when capturing indoor shots.
The camera app is user-friendly and allows for easy adjustment of settings. The front-facing 16MP (f/2.0) camera effectively handles skin tones, particularly when filters and effects are disabled. This makes it suitable for social media usage and video calls. Overall, while the camera performance is decent, there may be an expectation for enhanced capabilities, especially considering this is a Vivo smartphone.
The Vivo T3 is equipped with MediaTek’s Dimensity 7200 chipset (up to 2.8GHz octa-core processor, Mali G68 GC4 GPU), along with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS2.2 internal storage (also available in 256GB). The phone runs on Funtouch OS 14 based on Android 14 with the March security patch installed. The phone’s general day-to-day performance has been satisfactory – it handles switching between apps, scrolling inside social media apps, messaging, and calling without any issues. Its animation could have been a little smoother, given the higher refresh rate display, but it’s not a major concern. One can expect to play a game like BGMI at around 55 to 60FPS without too many frame drops and overheating issues. The OS is quite feature-rich but comes with a lot of pre-installed third-party apps. These can be uninstalled, but doing so would also require disabling some notifications and features like the lockscreen Poster, which is asked to be turned on more than once after being turned off during the device setup. Although Vivo’s own gallery app is stable to use, there’s no option to change the default app for it within the app settings, unlike for other features such as the browser and app launcher.
Boasting a 5,000mAh battery unit, the Vivo T3 lasted me a full day more often than not even at moderate to heavy use. The bundled 44 watt FastCharge charger is able to charge the device from 1% to full in around 75 minutes.
The stereo speakers on the phone are pretty decent, with the audio booster helping a bit for playback. However, they do tend to distort at higher volume levels. Call quality and WiFi reception are top-notch, while 5G network reception is decent enough to be relied upon for data needs on the go.
In conclusion, the Vivo T3 has several things going for it – great battery life, good display, and a decent gaming performance for the price tag. However, the software experience out of the box could have been a bit better. Hopefully, Vivo’s 2 years of OS updates and 3 years of security patches policy can help keep the device running smoothly without any major bugs, making it a decent option under 20k (base model) for those valuing battery life and sturdy build quality over other things.
