The Y51L is another budget smartphone from Chinese phone maker Vivo. Priced at Rs.11,980, the phone has some glaring shortcomings, which put it at a significant disadvantage compared to rivals.
Design: Compact buy hefty
Display: Small and dull screen
Compared to big screen phones which are in vogue these days, the Y51L’s 5-inch screen does feel more compact. It has a resolution of 960x540p and looks a bit dull during gaming and video playback. Casual users who are more into web browsing, reading news, and social networking may find the screen okay, but at this price, the low resolution leaves a lot to be desired.
Software: Runs old Android with an engaging interface
The phone runs Android 5.0 (Lollipop), with Vivo’s customized user interface. Appearance-wise, it is just another Chinese phone interface with no app drawer and plenty of cool themes. The interface, in this case, packs some interesting design changes too. The drop down instant settings slide has been separated from the notifications slide. While a slide from the top shows notifications, an upward slide from the lower edge of the screen shows the settings panel. The interface offers some cool features such as screen recording, long screen shoot, which allows you to capture a screenshot of an entire webpage and not just the portion that is showing on the screen.
Performance: Works with basic tasks
The Y51L runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM. The combo is powerful enough to handle most basic tasks, including games such as Smash Hit and Temple Run Oz, well. However, it doesn’t feel very nippy and is good for a basic user with usage restricted to a few social networking apps and web browsing at most. It struggles with heavy games and is sluggish when there are 5-6 apps running in the background.
The phone offers 16GB of storage and supports a microSD card upto 128GB. There are dual SIM slots and support for 4G networks. The 2,350mAh battery can give a day’s backup at most if you do not stress it.
Camera: Lacks consistency
The 8-megapixel camera is a mixed bag. While we noticed noise in the landscape shots taken in broad daylight, it got the colour pretty much spot on. In close-ups, the colours again look good but there is considerable noise that is evident. Also, you need steady hands to get pictures out of it due to the phone’s lack of optical image stabilisation. Low-light shots are poor and blurry most of the time.
Verdict
The Vivo Y51L is just another budget smartphone that scores in terms of looks, but fails to make a mark in any other aspect. Its rivals such as the Moto G Turbo (Rs.12,499) offer much better specs, performance and an overall user experience.
