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Vivo Y33s Review: Right Phone, Wrong Time

2021 truly is the year of great value for money Android phones in South Africa. The reason for this is an influx of Chinese smartphone makers, all vying to make an impression on local consumers and potentially gobble up some of the market share that Huawei is losing.

While it remains to be seen which firm will replace Huawei, the competition right now is fierce.

That’s great news for consumers, with an affordable and well priced Android handset only a few clicks away, but it means the slower you are to market as a phone maker, the more you’ll get lost in the crowd.

That’s how we feel about the Vivo Y33s, which landed on our review desk a couple of weeks ago. It is our first encounter with the device, which arrives with plenty of Vodacom bloatware (nothing new for brands going the carrier route first for releases), and makes a solid enough impression given its R5 999 (RRP) price tag.

Does it do enough to stand out from the crowd where a dozen other devices are similarly specced and just as well priced?

We spent the past two weeks with the phone to find out. Here’s what we learned.

Kaleidoscopic

Let’s start with design, and the Midday Dream colour option present here certainly catches the eye.

Whether or not this is a trick Vivo picked from Huawei is unclear, which liked to feature gradient designs on its P series a few years ago, but the result is a device that will get double takes and queries as to what it is.

Even the clear generic plastic cover that comes in the box does little to dull the lustre of the back cover, although we should mention that it is the most vexing accessory we have encountered in some time, taking a considerable amount of force and patience to lever on and off of the phone.

We guess the upshot is that a tight fit means little dust can get in and potentially damage an otherwise beautiful exterior.

That back cover is doing a lot of the heavy lifting too, with the action up front quite similar to other devices we have encountered this year already. To that end a large 6.58″ display is present and serves up solid FullHD+ (2408×1080) visuals.

There’s a dewdrop-eque notch too, potentially pointing to the device being a little behind the pace in terms of design, but thankfully this notch is not intrusive, allowing content to flourish regardless. Sticking with the notch, it houses a capable 16MP selfie camera up front, but more about the camera performance a little later.

The rest of the Vivo Y33s is standard fare for this price range – USB Type-C port and 3.5mm headphone jack, a fingerprint sensor integrated into the power button on the right hand side, a dual nano SIM tray and microSD slot, and of course a large camera array on the rear featuring a trio of lenses.

All in all then the Vivo Y33s is well appointed and not left lacking when compared to other mid-range devices in this price bracket.

Steady as she goes

On the performance side of things the Y33s is willing and able. Powering things is an octa-Helio G80 processor from MediaTek, which is paired with a welcome 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, the former of which ensures that things are ticking over nicely.

That said, the Y33s is not going to stupefy with its performance, proving speedy enough while multitasking and not yielding any lag as we through process-heavy tasks at it.

Our benchmarking bared similar results, with a multi-core Geekbench score of 1 265 just pipping by last year’s Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 and slightly beaten by the TECNO Spark 7 Pro we reviewed only a few weeks ago.

To the Y33s’ credit, however, we did note that the Spark 7 could use a little more oomph, while this phone did not warrant such a comment.

Shifting to the rear camera array and a 50MP wide-angle lens serves as the primary option, which is supported by a 2MP macro and 2MP depth sensing lenses.

This is a fairly common configuration for phones these days, and the performance of the camera here bore that out – namely great outdoor photography and a little help needed on the low light side of things.

As such, the Y33s will yield solid images and the camera UI is easy enough to handle.

One final element for performance to mention here is battery life. With a 5 000mAh battery present, the Vivo Y33s is packing more than some of its competitors, which means a full day is easily achieved and those who are savvy with their phone use can get two days too.

There is 18W fast charging too, but we’re on the fence when it comes to such technology, especially on the lifespan of the battery when used too often.

Final verdict

As we have noted several times in this review, the Vivo Y33s is well specced, affordably priced and delivers a solid all-around performance. The problem it sits with, as do many other phone makers, is that there are already a dozen phones on the market that can make the same claim.

As such, the Y33s does not stand out from the crowd. That is not a slight on the phone or indeed Vivo. It is simply the fact of where the mid-range phone market in SA is. The only thing going for this phone right now, is a larger global presence than some of the other Chinese brands that have entered the market.

Added to this is the Vodacom bloatware we mentioned earlier, which serves as a reminder that networks are supporting the brand too.

FULL DISCLOSURE: THE VIVO Y33S WAS SEEDED TO HYPERTEXT FOR REVIEW AND WILL BE KEPT BY THE PUBLICATION.

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