Vivo S20 Review: specs and features, camera quality test, gaming benchmark, user opinions and photos

Vivo S20 - a hidden leader

It's sometimes a shame that due to an unsuccessful advertising campaign or other strange actions of the manufacturer, truly excellent smartphones for their price segment remain in the shadows. For example, the Chinese company Vivo did not spend too much on marketing for the hero of today's review, and even released it in a limited number of countries. But the device could have claimed the title of bestseller.

The appearance of the new product is impressive. The designers especially succeeded in the monoblock version with a back panel, the texture of which is stylized as flower petals. A beautiful block of photo modules, thin screen frames with a built-in fingerprint sensor emphasize the relevance of the exterior. The only thing missing is a more pleasant tactile sensation from the case, because it is made not of glass and metal, but of polycarbonate to reduce costs. However, the quality of the selected material is quite decent. The 6.67-inch AMOLED panel is no worse than that of flagships. There is also an excellent resolution of 2800x1260 pixels for the diagonal, and a smooth picture thanks to the 120-Hz refresh rate, and a huge peak brightness of 5000 nits. All of this is complemented by realistic color rendition, an oleophobic coating, and a minimal PWM effect.

The selection of technical characteristics is also quite successful. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 CPU, 8/12/16 GB of RAM and the Adreno 720 graphics adapter provide good performance in the region of 800-900 thousand points in the AnTuTu test with minor throttling. As a result, the Android 15 OS functions without visible lags, and applications launch instantly. The gaming capabilities of the processor are also excellent. The most resource-intensive projects, which include Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and others, will work at medium-high graphics settings. The 6500 mAh battery is great for the price category, a couple of days without looking for outlets will become the norm, not the exception to the rule. There is no wireless charging, but its wired counterpart received a power of 90 W. The full capacity can be reached in 40-45 minutes. The permanent memory is allocated 256/512 GB, there is no slot for MicroSD cards.

Photo capabilities cannot be considered perfect due to the lack of a telephoto lens, a mediocre 8-megapixel wide-angle lens. But the main 50-megapixel sensor from Omnivision with hybrid stabilization is ready to give good detail even to evening photos and video files. This is not the level of camera phones, but you can post pictures to social networks without editing. The stereo speakers are loud enough, and the bass is also audible. NFC contactless payments, 5G network support, and even an IR port will be additional reasons to buy the gadget. But the temporary lack of a global version of the unit may discourage you from buying it. Therefore, there are non-removable service applications, and the FDD-LTE B20 necessary for the ideal operation of 4G networks is missing. But these are still trifles that are easy to get along with.