The Vivo V30 is a skinny selfie specialist
This mid-ranger is packing the smartphone version of soft box lighting
Vivo has long been the mid-range smartphone master as far as selfie skills are concerned. It’s V-series phones have squeezed huge pixel counts into their front-facing cameras, while clever fill flashes on the rear made for more flattering photos. The firm is looking to keep that trend alive with the new Vivo V30, which squeezes an even bigger ring light into one of the slimmest handsets around.
This polycarbonate-backed size zero is a barely-there 7.45mm thick, which is 0.1mm slimmer than the outgoing Vivo V29. It matches that phone on weight at just 186g, yet somehow has space for a much larger 5000mAh battery. IP54 splash and dust resistance isn’t too shabby for a mid-range model either.
Photography continues to be the main event, with a trio of 50MP sensors: two at the rear and one punching through the 6.78in AMOLED display up front. The wide-angle and ultrawide cams get to put the larger, softer Aura Light flash to best use; it’s 19x larger and 50x softer than a typical smartphone LED flash, and has smarter colour temperature adjustment than the V29 for creating convincing pics in any lighting conditions.
Vivo has been on a hot streak recently, with the X100 Pro ranking among the very best smartphones for still image quality. I’m hoping the more affordable V30 can get even part of the way to matching it.
Power is a big leap forward from the Snapdragon 778G+ seen on the outgoing V29. There’s a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip running the show, paired with either 8 or 12GB of RAM and as much as 512GB of on-board storage depending on the model. It’ll be running Android 14 out of the box, with Vivo’s FunTouchOS interface on top. Battery charging tops out at a heady 80W over USB-C.
A curved-edge screen and polished central frame look the part of a much pricier phone. It’ll land in Bloom White, Waving Aqua, Noble Black and Lush Green colours. The latter uses colour-changing Flourite glass to add some pizazz under UV light.
Vivo has yet to dish the dirt on pricing, or which territories will be first in line to get the Vivo V30. I’m betting it’ll go up against the Google Pixel 7a, Redmi Note 13 Pro+ and Honor Magic 6 Lite at roughly the £450/$450/€500 mark.
Traditionally Vivo hasn’t sold the V-series in the UK or the US. That seems unlikely to change this year, with the usual suspects (India, Malaysia, Turkey and Mexico) being first in line.
Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor