Vivo V30e First Impressions: Similar Design, New Camera

Vivo's ‘e'-branded smartphones under its V series are positioned right below its vanilla V series. New smartphones are launched each year with sub-Rs. 30,000 pricing and slightly watered-down specifications, but aim to offer impressive cameras for its selling price. For 2024, after launching the Vivo V30 Pro and Vivo V30, the brand has launched the Vivo V30e in India.

Vivo V30e is available in two variants. The base variant has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, priced at Rs. 27,999. The second variant offers 256GB of storage and is priced at Rs. 29,999 in India. Both variants use LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage.

The variants are available in two finishes – Velvet Red and Silk Blue. Both the colourways have a dual-tone back panel that is a combination of matte and glossy finish but use different materials. The Velvet Red colour option uses a glass back whereas the Silk Blue option sports a back panel that is made up of a plastic composite sheet. Because of this, the two colour options have slightly different dimensions. The Velvet Red weighs 188 grams and is 7.75mm thick, while the Silk Blue colourway weighs 179 grams and is 7.65mm thick.

We got our hands on the Velvet Red colour option. The smartphone sports a glittery matte-finished rear panel with a glossy portion that has a chequered pattern. This is a very dark that colour and almost looks dark brown or even black from some angles. The smartphone uses a circular camera module that houses the dual-rear c,amera setup with a golden rin. It alsoound it and sports the Vivo logo at the bottom.

The Velvet Red colour option of the Vivo V30e

The Vivo V30e has chrome side rails with the power button and volume buttons on the right, a hybrid sim slot, a USB 2.0 Type-C port, a microphone and a speaker at the bottom and another microphone for noise cancellation at the top. The smartphone is rated IP64 for dust and water resistance, which is expected at this price point given that some lower-priced smartphones offer better.

The phone has a 6.78-inch curved-edge AMOLED panel with 120Hz refresh rate and 2,400 x 1,080 pixels resolution. Vivo claims a peak brightness of 1,300 nits and also houses the in-display fingerprint sensor. There is no official word from the brand if it uses any version of Corning's Gorilla Glass or not.

V30e will get three years of Android updates and will receive security patches for four years

The smartphone runs Vivo's Funtouch OS 14 which is based on Android 14, it does have some pre-installed apps out of which only some can be uninstalled. It is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC that we've recently seen on the Realme 12 Pro 5G and Honor X9b, which also happens to be direct competition for the V30e.

The dual-rear camera setup consists of a 50-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.79 aperture and optical image stabilisation (OIS) and an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera with an f/2.2 aperture. The camera interface also offers 2X digital zoom that utilises the primary camera.

The camera module does not protrude by much and the smartphone does not wobble on a table

The primary camera can shoot videos at up to 4K 30fps at its native magnification as well as on the 2x zoom. The ultra-wide angle camera can only shoot videos at 1080p 30fps. The smartphone is also equipped with a circular aura light flash that we saw previously on the Vivo V29 Pro. It can change colour temperature to accommodate the lighting situation.

For the front camera, the V30e sports a 50-megapixel camera with an f/2.45 aperture that can shoot videos at up to 4K 30fps. We will be testing its full capabilities in our review.

Powering the phone is a 5,500mAh battery that can be charged using the bundled 44W charging adaptor. The Vivo V30e competes with the Realme 12 Pro and Honor X9b with its sub-Rs. 30,000 price tag and similar specifications. But how well does it perform in real-world usage? We'll find out in our full review of the Vivo V30e which will be out soon.