Design and Display
The Vivo Y17 holds a regular smartphone design and it leans towards a thick smartphone built. Even without a case it feels bulky. And when putting the transparent case, which comes in the box, it becomes a handful to hold. Its weight is 191g which is not much, but it is not on the lighter side either. The front of the Vivo Y17 is dominated by the huge 6.35-inch HD+ (720 x 1,544 pixels) IPS LCD display with a dew-drop notch on top holding the front camera. The earpiece is placed right above the front camera in a metallic grille. And its display is one of the major selling points as it just dominates the smartphone. It does not compare to the colours and the accuracy of an AMOLED display panel, but does a fine job nevertheless. Its display comes with a slight yellowish tint which can be manually treated by tweaking the colour controls.
The right side of the Vivo Y17 holds the volume rockers and the power button, which is easy to use with one hand. The top of the smartphone is devoid of any sensors while the left side of the Vivo Y17 holds the SIM and microSD card slot. Yes, it has a dedicated dual-SIM slot along with a microSD card slot. The bottom part of the Vivo Y17 holds a speaker grille along with a Micro-USB port for charging and a headphone jack along with a microphone. The back of the Vivo Y17 has a gradient back panel which comes in two colour options – Blue and Purple and it does look good. The back panel of the smartphone is also made up of glass which further adds to its premium looks.
The Vivo Y17’s dimensions are 159.43 × 76.77 × 8.92mm while its weight is 190.5g, which as said before is a bit on the heavier side. It comes in two colour variant – Mineral Blue and Mystic Purple, we had the Mineral Blue version and needless to say, we were impressed with its glass built. It has a gradient back finish which is blue at the top which turns into darker shade of blue at the bottom.
Performance and Cameras
On the performance department, the Vivo Y17 packs a tru-octa core MediaTek Helio P35 SoC and it performs well in the day-to-day activities. It packs 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage with a dedicated microSD card slot. And since it has 4GB of RAM it handles multi-tasking well. Although there were some jitters and lag here and there when we tried to push it in the performance area, it can handle daily usage with ease. It should be noted that it is not a top-end flagship, it costs under Rs 20K price point and offers just the same – mid-range performance. So, don’t expect it to out-perform all your heavy usage. Gaming on the Vivo Y17 was fairly good as most games ran on medium settings. PUBG ran on Balanced graphics with Medium frame rate, the HD and the HDR graphics option was not supported for the smartphone so you will have to play in the Balanced setting itself. The device comes with what’s named as ‘Game Assistant’ mode and it basically functions as other Game modes in smartphones.
The Game Assistant in the Vivo Y17 comes with options to disable or enable the following notifications and features – Calls, Notifications, Three-finger mode, Performance SDK option, CPU optimization and RAM optimization along with Esports Mode and a Reject option. The Game Assistant does what it says and it blocks all the notification with a quick and simple toggle. Games such as Asphalt 8, Asphalt 9 etc ran on medium settings without any hiccups. Talking about the benchmarks, the Vivo Y17 scores 87,762 on AnTuTu Benchmarking and on Geekbench it scores 904 on single core and 4,367 on multi core. Not bad for a sub-20K smartphone. Now to talk about the battery life, the Vivo Y17 packs a massive 5,000mAh battery which easily lasted 2 days on normal and regular usage of browsing, social media, YouTube etc. At the end of the day, we were left with around 40% of battery charge, on a normal usage day. But once you start putting heavy load on the Vivo Y17 you can see a battery output of just a full day. It also comes with an 18W Dual Engine Fast Charging support, which is able to charge the battery from 0% to 100% in around two hours. So, on the battery department, Vivo Y17 wins with flying colours. In the security department, the Vivo Y17 comes with a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner along with face unlock. In our testing we found out that the fingerprint scanner of the Vivo Y17 was fast, it unlocked the device right after your fingers have made contact with the sensor. But when unlocking with wet fingers, it took some time for it to recognize our limbs. On the other hand, the face unlock is fast. You just need to press the unlock button and face your smartphone, and it will unlock automatically.
The Vivo Y17 runs Android 9.0 skinned with FunTouch OS 9 so there are no complaints about the OS of the device. The FunTouch OS 9 might take some time to get used to as it does things its own ways and techniques. In some ways, the FunTouch OS 9 seems like a copy of iOS but it was smooth and jitter free. The quick-menu toggles are pulled from the bottom of the screen with an upwards slide motion (similar to an iPhone), the quick-menu toggles give the option to toggle on/off things like Wi-Fi, Mobile data, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth and so on. But when sliding from the top like other Android smartphones, you will be greeted with a notification panel which will show app notifications.
Talking about the camera of the Vivo Y17, it features an AI triple-rear camera setup placed in a vertically with gold linings around it. Below the camera setup is the LED flash. The rear camera of the Vivo Y17 consists of a 13MP main camera with an f/2.2 aperture paired with an 8MP 16mm ultra-wide lens with an f/2.2 aperture. The third sensor is a 2MP depth sensor with an f/2.4 aperture. While at the front, there is a 20MP selfie camera with an f/2.0 aperture. The rear camera of the Vivo Y17 comes with features such as Auto Scene, Doc capture, Pro Mode, Voice Control, Time-Lapse, Live Photos, HDR andSuper-Wide Angle Camera to name a few. While the front camera of the device comes laden with features such as Gender Detection, face beauty, live photo, voice control, portrait, beauty camera filter etc.
We tried the camera of the Vivo Y17 and needless to say, it delivered. The colours were vivid and lively with good contrast range, but as mentioned before, the white balance is a little on the warmer side. The low-light photography of the device gets the job done, but it too suffers from noise and detail reduction in very dark areas. The other negative point is the lack of OIS (optical image optimization), so zooming in becomes jittery and shaky. Other than that, it is a good camera with fast-focus and image production.
Verdict
At some places, the Vivo Y17 shines, like the price point it is targeted at, while at other is aches. The display, build and battery of the Vivo Y17 is great and it doesn’t feel like a cheap smartphone, but on the other hand, the camera could have been improved and it could have been a little slimmer. Considering it is priced at Rs 15,990 where smartphones like Redmi Note 7 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy A50 play, the Vivo V17 seems over-priced. But nonetheless, it still is a good smartphone for people looking for a good camera phone and large battery life within a budget. Pros: Good display Battery life Fast face unlock and fingerprint scanner Cons: Camera at night could have been better Average gaming performance Thick build For the latest gadget and tech news, and gadget reviews, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For newest tech & gadget videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You can also stay up to date using the Gadget Bridge Android App.
