Vivo V21 unboxing

    Vivo V21 unboxing 

  Vivo used a lot of glitter on this box,  we can only hope that it is in fact gold.

When you open the box, you’re greeted with the smartphone. Let’s take out that sticker. This 

is the Dusk blue color, It also comes in sunset dazzle and active white in select regions.

Sealed tightly away, we have the SIM ejection tool. 


A warranty card. A hefty 33-watt fast charger.  

a USB type C cable, a pair of earphones and a  

USB C to headphone jack adapter for plugging your earphones coz there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack.

There’s a screen protector already applied. Now in the official retail box,  

you will get a transparent  TPU case. Something to Note.

On the front, you have a 6.44 inch FHD+  AMOLED display with a 90hz refresh rate.  

On the top, it has a waterdrop notch that houses a 44-megapixel camera with dual flash.

On  

the back, you have a 64-megapixel triple

camera set up with flash and some Vivo branding.

On the left, you have nothing wow really?

On the right, you have your volume  rocker and a textured power button

On  

the top you have a microphone

On the bottom, you have a speaker, a USB  type C port, a microphone, and a hybrid  

SIM Tray holds 2 4G/LTE Nano SIM  cards or 1 SIM and 1 SD Card.

The design of the Vivo V21 immediately reminds me of the V20 that I reviewed, super sleek 

premium feel all around, but the V21 is actually slimmer than the V20. Vivo is calling this the 

most advanced AG matte glass that is scratch resistant but for me, it’s this subtle mature 

lor that really catches my eye, you already know how matte colors hide fingerprint smudges. I think 

this is probably the best color to get. The shape of the frame is a little iPhone 12 ish.  

It is lightweight as expected.  I mean they shaved off so much that 

a headphone jack couldn’t fit the frame. That sort of explains it all.

On the front, you get the same old-school notch that the V20 had but the bezels and chin have lost 

a bit of weight. The same screen size on a smaller frame. It makes sense. Sunlight legibility is  

great, unlike*coughs* transition *coughs* .  It’s much more convenient for one-hand use 

and I didn’t have any issues typing with just one thumb. Colors look super vibrant and punchy,  

which is a characteristic of AMOLED displays.
 
The Vivo V21 comes with 128 Gigs of storage 

and 8 gigs of ram. You get 100 Gigs of available storage. Here’s where things get interesting. You 

know how you can extend your RAM, using the available Storage space, on your PC.  

Well, you have 3Gigs of extended RAM in addition to the 8Gigs of RAM. Yep that’s a whopping 11GB  

of RAM for you to play around with. You just have to try not to use up all of that storage space.  

I think other brands need to borrow this tech asap.

We’re running on Android 11 with FunTouch 

version 11.1 slapped on top of it. By now we all know how close to stock android this is.  

Very little bloat and a clean interface free of ads. 

The fun part of this Funtouch OS  

is in those dynamic effects and here it comes packed with a ton of new animation settings,  

even one for entering your home screen.  It has all the little things to change 

how aesthetically pleasing your experience is and even a few functional ones like the ambient light effect which is a really  Cool notification LED substitute.

On the display settings, asides from the usual dark theme and screen colors, we have an option to 

switch between 60hz and 90hz refresh rate for a smoother user experience and then there’s 

an option to automatically switch when it’s necessary because it’s not every time you’re 

gaming or scrolling through apps and menus. 
 You get a fully packed quick setting,  

with everything you could possibly want to do quickly 

plus change. Feels like Vivo just put everything on here, even a calculator.  



Navigation is optional, unlike stock  Android, you’re not tired of any specific 

position. I find that compact phones are more comfortable to use with gestures. I always feel 

like big phones are painful to use gestures on. 
The Vivo V21 uses the MediaTek Dimensity 800U  

CPU clocked at 2.4GHZ. I have been dying to get my hands on the density chipsets just to know 

what it feels like. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I  don’t think it is hyped enough. This chip blows 

the Snapdragon 720G out of the water.

To put things in perspective, let’s consult nano review dot net. 

 

The Density Chip is sitting pretty high up as far as midranges are concerned, then we have 

the Snapdragon 732G and then 720G and then the  Helio G95. These processors can all handle everyday 

tasks pretty well but when you start with the heavy stuff like video rendering or extreme 

multitasking, then the Density 800U on the Vivo  V21 pulls ahead of the rest. Versus dot com gives 

the mix-matched result to the snapdragon chipsets but again Dimensity 800U is still the boss.

The fingerprint sensor is situated underneath the display. Under display 

fingerprint sensors aren’t the fastest and you cannot lock and unlock in quick succession but 

it is fast enough for real-life usage.  Something that valor reviews do to 

increase speed is to reduce the animation but I  actually love the animation very much thank you.

The face unlock is fast and unlocks in every type of lighting, even in pitch darkness and with just 

your side view. That’s pretty aggressive and may not be worth the security risk.


Here’s how the speaker compares side by side the Google Pixel 5’s.

When  

it comes to gaming, as usual, I played  PUBG on HD graphics and High frame rates,  

the highest PUBG setting for this phone.  It ran pretty smoothly as can be expected.  

The most remarkable thing about gaming on this phone is probably how cool it runs throughout.  

It is very reassuring when devices run cool while gaming, even though this is not a gaming phone.

The Vivo V21 is powered by a 4000mAh battery  which is below average for 2021 but in terms  

of battery life, I put it through my usual battery  test, about 4 hours of PUBG, 2 hours on Instagram,  

2 hours on Twitter and Facebook etcetera all on  WiFi. 

This gave me 12 hours of screen on time 

with 10% left to spare. It was still connected to  WiFi but asleep for 13 hours before dropping from  

10 to 2%, which is actually great standby time considering. I did all of my tests exclusively 

on a 90hz refresh rate and it definitely will give the average user well over a day’s worth 

of battery life. The takeaway here really is Battery calibration over everything.

It  

took me 25mins to charge to 60 percent and  1 hour and 2 minutes for a full charge. This 

is definitely a respectable fast charging speed in  2021 and I used the charger that came in the box.

The Vivo v21’s camera is pretty feature-rich but the many option placements definitely 

need to be simplified. You will also  need to toggle 44megapixel mode on the  

front and 64-megapixel mode on the back  every time, using the high-resolution  

option. I used the highest settings throughout. Let’s see some photos

Outdoors, this selfie camera is doing too damn much. It’s very clear with great skin tones and 

well-balanced exposure levels. Honestly the fact that I can see the details in my iris alone.  

That’s gold for me. If you don’t want your skin to have so much texture,  

you probably should just use the default mode.

Using portrait mode, the depth-sensing is great but it’s showing a completely different 

color profile that is less color accurate. 
With the primary, okay this is way too 

detailed way too sharp. Definitely no longer midrange territory. I get similar results 

when I use flagship cameras so close to my face. I can almost see microorganisms. Damn.

Depth sensing here is not so accurate, cropped my right ear off and that is a constant problem area.

We get a decent high Dynamic range and using the ultra-wide lens doesn’t cause too much 

of a dip in quality. Certainly retains the same color profile.

Using this camera, you can just tell that it’s not in the same league as any of the 

phones I’ve reviewed recently and I will definitely do a full comparison video,  

just let me know what device you’d like me to compare it within the comments.  

Also if you made it this far, a sub to the channel will be appreciated.

Let’s go inside. 
In poor lighting, the cameras are 

still able to capture details. Its mote color is accurate on the Primary camera and the selfie camera is definitely doing what selfie cameras are meant to do by brightening your face.

 

Using portrait mode, their sense of depth is great but neither one is color accurate. The 

selfie camera is preferable but there’s this glow about it like a beauty filter has been applied while the primary camera is way too saturated.  

Night mode on the V21 is actually pretty average for a midrange phone and I see some loss in detail, compared to the default camera shot.

The dual front-facing flash does a fairly decent  

job. 
 

It records videos in 4K from the front and back cameras with optical image stabilization on both