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vivo Y12s review: A Surprisingly Good Budget-friendly Smartphone!

vivo Y12s

Vivo Philippines recently launched another budget-friendly sub-₱7,000 smartphone. The Vivo Y12s boasts a large battery capacity, and a nice display, and comes with dual rear cameras.

vivo Y12s

Is this device pack with the right features to compete in a very competitive smartphone market? time to find out in our hands-on review.

Unboxing
It comes in basic packaging, just like the Vivo Y20s [G] it got the product label at the front and the technical details at the back of the box.

vivo Y12s

Inside it contains the Vivo Y12s smartphone, jelly case, SIM pin, micro-USB cable, 10W charger, and documentation, it's almost complete with the absence of wired earphones.


Design and Built
For a budget device, vivo Y12s look nice in its solid sky blue color, and it even reflects RGB light when stikes by light at a certain angle, it also comes in Phantom Black color.

vivo Y12s

It has a matte finish that is resistant to dust and fingerprints which is good and since it comes with a protective case, it can maintain its good looks.

vivo Y12s

The dual camera is horizontally aligned together with the LED light and the vivo branding just below.

The built feels solid and it does not feel and look cheap, it has curved sides that make it easy and comfortable to hold even for long hours of use since it only weighs 191g.

vivo Y12s

The volume rocker and the power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner are placed on the right-hand side. On the other side is the SIM tray that supports two 4G enable nano-Sim cards and one microSD card for additional storage.

vivo Y12s

At the bottom are the usual connectivity port such as a micro-USB port, and 3.5mm audio jack, there is also a speaker and microphone. Too bad vivo still uses the old micro-USB port instead of the now-standard type-C since it offers faster charging and data transfer.

Display and Audio
Upfront of the vivo Y12s is a 6.51-inch Halo Fullview display with HD+ (1600x720) resolution. The notch housed the front-facing camera, it has minimal bezels except in the bottom area.

vivo Y12s

The display has nothing spectacular to offer, it has a good screen resolution and the colors it produces are decent enough to watch YouTube videos and play games, and with its 20:9 aspect ratio landscape videos look wide.

vivo Y12s

It has adaptive brightness that automatically adjusts based on the available light, it also has Eye protection that can be set based on user preference. Dark theme mode is available system-wide, and color temperature can be adjusted.

In terms of audio, it has a single speaker at the bottom, and the volume is loud but not inspiring, it's good for notifications and alarms but for music playback, it's better to use wired earphones or a TWS for a better experience.

Performance
Under the hood, this device is powered by MediaTek Helio P35 mobile chipset with up to 2.35GHz clocked speed, paired with PowerVR GE8320 GPU, and comes with 3GB of RAM and only 32GB (20.88GB available) of storage. Still not bad for an entry-level, although we wish that Vivo should at least bump up the storage to 64GB, good thing it supports a microSD card for that needed storage.

vivo Y12s

vivo Y12s performance on benchmark apps

AnTuTu: 124075
GFXBench: 15fps (ES 3.1 onscreen)
Geekbench 4: 169 Single-core / 1319 Multi-core

Gaming Performance is decent, simple casual games will run great, but games that require a lot of resources and processing power will be limited to default low to medium game settings.

Installing Call of Duty mobile requires huge storage space, and the run well on default medium graphic quality and frame rate. For Genshin Impact, however, even on the lowest settings is lag and almost not playable. But games such as Stumble Guys and Mario Kart Tour run smoothly. It has Ultra Game Mode and Game Assistant that keep games running smoothly by allocating more resources to the current game being played.

Funtouch OS
It runs on funtouch OS 11 based on Android 10 out of the box, it offers a nice user experience and responsiveness. It features an app drawer by default, with a nice circular icon, and colorful default wallpaper, but it can be easily customized.

vivo Y12s

It features multi-window support, Jovi Home, the V-Appstore, and iManager. It also comes pre-installed with third-party apps such as Facebook, Lazada, GCash, and Likee.

If you are moving from your old phone, you can use EasyShare Phone clone features to transfer your data to the vivo Y12s so that you won't lose any of your personal data.

Cameras
On the camera department this device sports a dual-camera sensor at the back with a 13-megapixel, f/2.2 main sensor with a 2-megapixel, f/2.4 depth sensor, looking closely at the camera, it has three lenses, with the third one is one dummy or blank. Not really sure why vivo uses this camera case, maybe they are recycling some of thier designs from the previous model. While at the notch of the screen is the 8-megapixel selfie camera.

vivo Y12s

The camera apps support Photo, Pro Mode, Video, Panorama, Live Photo, Time-Lapse, and Document modes. With available filters and support for HDR mode.

The camera can take really nice images when there is plenty of light or during daylight. The details of the pictures are good with sharpness, the saturation is a bit off but still, it has good color reproduction.

But photos taken in dim places suffer from grainy and loss of details which is expected, but using the flash will help to capture a better image at night. Good thing Instagram offers filters and image editing before posting.

For the selfie camera, the same applies the more light the better selfie images. This can be used when attending zoom meetings or online classes, just use a ring light for a better selfie image.

For recording videos, both the back and front camera is capable of 1080p video recording at 30pfs.

Battery Life
This phone is packed with a large 5,000mAh battery that supports 10W charging. On an average day with a full charge, the vivo Y12s were able to give us a whole day of screen-time that includes work-related research, watching cat videos, browsing social media, playing games, and music, and watching more cat videos. By the end of the day, it still has enough battery power for the next day's use.

vivo Y12s

On PCMark Work 2.0 battery loop test it got 16 hours of straight usage. Charging the battery is not that fast since it only supports 10W of charging, so it takes more than 3 hours to fully charge the battery from 3% to 100%.

vivo Y12s Specs:

Android 10, Funtouch OS 11
6.51-inch HD+ IPS Display, 1600 x 720 pixel resolution
MediaTek Helio P35 octa-core processor
3GB RAM / 32GB internal storage
Expandable via microSD
13MP, f/2.2 + 2MP, f/2.4 rear cameras, LED flash
8MP selfie camera
Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
Dual SIM, Dual Standby
4G LTE
WiFi, dual-band
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, BeiDou, GLONASS
micro-USB 2.0
Fingerprint scanner
5,000mAh battery
Colors: Phantom Black, Glacier Blue
191g

Verdict
For its price of ₱6,499, the vivo Y12s is a good budget smartphone that offers a nice display with good performance. The Side-mounted fingerprint scanner is better and it's quick in unlocking the phone. It has a chick and modern design that makes it looks premium device. The battery life is impressive and the camera can take good pictures and videos. The downside is that this device still uses the old micro-USB port, support for graphics extensive games, and very limited storage capacity. If you are looking for a device but have a limited budget, you might want to take a look at vivo Y12s as your next smartphone.

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