Vivo Y17 Brief Review, Ratings, Pros Cons, Specs, Cases & Covers

Vivo Y17 Brief Review and Pros Cons:

Vivo is now a company that is well known to the Indian consumers for their promises of perfect selfies. With the launch of their latest mid-range the Y17 Vivo plans on giving its audience not only “Perfect Selfies” but good photography capabilities too. The question now is, will Vivo be able to reach out to a wider audience with competition coming from the likes of Redmi Note 7 Pro, Realme 3 Pro, and Samsung A50 smartphone priced under 20000? Or is it that the competition is way more difficult for the Y17 to fit in?

This is the short review of the Vivo Y17. As always read on to find out my friends.

2019 is the year where we see every single company going with, one a gradient paint job at the back, two a glass or glossy plastic pretending to be a glass back.

Well, with the Y17 thankfully you do get the gradient paint job with streamlined lines running diagonally from top to bottom of the phone and a glass back panel. The triple camera, LED flash and the fingerprint sensor reside to the rear of the phone. Now Vivo does not mention what type of glass is used but it does add to the fit and finish of the device.

However, it is to be noted that the buttons are probably one of the worst features of the phone build. They are mushy and are not tactile. None the less, the power and volume rocker reside to the right of the phone with the top being completely clean. The dual SIM slot and a dedicated micro SD card slot expandable up to 256GB resides to the left. Finally, the headphone jack, primary and only microphone and the speaker grill lay low at the bottom.

Another huge disappointment is the use of a micro USB port instead of a Type C one which rests at the bottom of the phone.

Overall this is basically “Do not judge a book by its cover” scenario. The probably only good thing about the build and design is the use of a beautiful glass back and the dedicated memory card slot and the 2 color options: Mineral Blue and Mystic purple.

Coming to the display review, we again find fancy promotional terms being used here. The Y17 comes with a Halo FullView display. What this means is this that it’s a teardrop notch display that has a weird aspect ratio of 19.3:9. It is 6.35-inch LCD screen with a screen resolution of 89% and an HD+ resolution of 1544X720. This again is a huge, huge let down especially considering that this is not an under 10000 phone, more of this in a while. The display isn’t bad, it’s just this that it's pathetic when you consider what the competition in the form of the Realme 3 pro and  Redmi Note 7 pro has to offer. This department is simply a letdown.

Let us now take about the battery backup. Battery life is probably one of the only department that the Y17 gets right. The Y17 gets a mammoth 5000mAh battery. When it comes to top recharging it thanks to the inclusion of an 18W Dual-engine fast charger (included in the box), you can top the battery back up pretty fast. Vivo does not mention how fast is this fast charger but does mention this that the fast charger comes with 9 charging protection. This is easily a 2 day plus battery life thanks to the low-res display and the weak processor, more on that later again.

Now coming to the camera of Vivo Y17, at first sight, appears to be the only savior of this phone. Remember, ‘appears to be’, The rear camera gets a tri-camera treatment here with a primary 13MP F2.2 shooter. This is accompanied by an 8MP F2.2 Super wide angle and a 2MP F2.4 depth sensor. The selfie shooter is a 20MP F2.0 lens.

The primary shooter is average to good at max nothing special. The depth sensor does what depth sensors usually do, separating the background from the foreground to give portrait shots. Colors definitely look slightly washed and images will come out soft. Night time though it is simply a bad performer.

What truly is good is that Super wide-angle lens which gives a total of a 120-degree field of view. When this lens is used for the right scene it's truly amazing. The perspective that you can achieve from this lens if second to none in this category apart from one contender that simply thrashes the Y17 in all departments. Read till the end to find out which phone is it.

The selfie camera, on the other hand, is pretty good at 20MP captures plenty of details and host regular parlor tricks like Beauty mode and portrait shots. Giving the camera a prospective rating, it is a C Plus to a B minus at max.

We finally come to the department that runs all the show in on any phone. The processor and the software accompanying it.

Vivo Y17 comes in the form of the Helio P35 from MediaTek.  The P35 is an Octa-core A-53 core processor that is built on the 12nm processor clocked at 2.3GHz. The P35 is slightly better than the Snapdragon 636 in both CPU an GPU, but only slightly. However, is completely thrashed by the Snapdragon 660. Anyway, the Vivo Y17  scores around 86000 on AnTuTu. The poor choice of Processor considering the price point goes with an even weird and poorer choice of memory. The Y17 comes at 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. This is the only choice available and is similar to what was seen on the Huawei P30 Lite.

Day to day task should be good. The only time you will find any sort of lag is while playing heavy games and multi-tasking. Even if Vivo says that the phone comes with ‘Ultra game mode’, there is only so much software can do with the limited hardware. The GPU is in the form of PowerVR GE8320 and this is not a very powerful GPU either. So, yes irrespective of what Vivo says games will only be playable at medium settings.

The software is again a letdown as is Vivo’s proprietary FuntouchOS 9 atop Android 9. The UI is overloaded with things and it basically tries to be the lovechild child of Android and iOS. What we mean by this is that the design cues have lots of things that are just copy pasted from iOS and this simply does not make sense. Stock android lovers this is not a cup of tea for you.

 All in all, the performance department is a complete let down in our opinion considering the price point of under 20000.

Now, we would not have hit the Y17 so hard. Yes, people can live without a type C port. Yes, people can live with an HD+ display. And Yes, people can live with the Helio P35. All of this could be yes if we were living in 2017 and the phone would have costed 13K.

Sadly, this is 2019 and the phone with the weird memory option of 4/128 GB comes in at a whopping rupees 17990. At that price, it is simply unforgivable. At that price, you can buy either of the top line models of the Redmi note 7 pro or the Realme 3 pro. Both are great value for money and both are better phones than the Y17 in all aspects.

Now, remember in the camera department we told you about a phone that is a direct competition to the Y17? Well, that’s non-other than the A50 from Samsung. Better optics, Better FHD+ AMOLED display, Better processor, check. The list goes on and on.

What we are trying to say is that if you are considering to buy this phone our suggestion would be that your money will most definitely be spent elsewhere. This is a phone that we personally would have skipped because the only good thing it offers is a big battery life and good internal storage.

User Reviews of Vivo Y17:

If you would like to read the reviews given by customers who bought Vivo Y17, check out the links below

Read Vivo Y17 User Reviews on Flipkart

Read Vivo Y17 User Reviews on Amazon