Vivo XPlay 6. Photo: Ben His
Vivo’s 2016 flagship, the XPlay 5, was an absolute beast of a phone when it hit the market last March. It was the world’s first phone with 6GB of RAM (preceding the OnePlus 3 by a couple of months), and rocked a then-very new Snapdragon 820. So with that in mind, Vivo’s follow-up, the just released XPlay 6, may varnish some of that initial wow factor at first glance, since it contains mostly the same specs, including the aforementioned RAM and processor.
But I’ve spent the past week using the Vivo XPlay 6 as my daily driver, and I can say the XPlay 6 is a major improvement over the last phone. Yes, nothing about the XPlay 6 pops off the stat sheet (unless you count the almost silly 16-megapixel selfie cam) or differ from the last phone, but this is a much more refined piece of premium, beautiful hardware without any significant flaw.
The XPlay 6 is a beautiful device. (and La La Land is great, you guys should watch this if you like the movie)
I have to get this out of the way first, since I assume most of my readers are outside of China hence they use Google: the Google Play Services work perfectly on the XPlay 6. This is huge because the XPlay 5 had a major software bug that didn’t allow Google apps to install. I’m so, so glad Vivo fixed this, because while Google is banned in China, the rest of the world rely on Gmail and YouTube and Maps. (Note to other Chinese phonmakers: if you care about selling your phone outside of China, please make sure it allows Google to run without problems)
Anyway, back to the phone. The XPlay 6 is yet another dual-curved phone, and while its design won’t win any points for originality, Vivo has managed to craft curves that don’t sacrifice usability in favor of style. Yup, I’m talking about erroneous palm touches on the sides of the phone — this is a problem that plagues the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and, to a lesser degree, the Xiaomi Mi Note 2, but here on the Vivo XPlay 6, it’s virtually non-existent. Much props to Vivo’s software engineers for writing a clever palm-rejection algorithm into Vivo’s software, because this is the first dual-curved screen phone on which I can leave all apps on the bottom dock (on the S7 Edge and Mi Note 2, I can’t put apps in the lower left most corner because my palm keep accidentally tap on it when I grip the phone one-handed with my left hand).
The curves on the XPlay 6 are more drastic than in recent curved screen phones.
The curved AMOLED panel — which is brilliant and as gorgeous to look at as any big name flagship out there — slopes dramatically into a heavy-duty metal frame. At 178g, the XPlay 6 is a heavy, hefty phone, but in a good way. This feels less like a toy gadget than a powerful working machine.
Vivo’s moved the fingerprint sensor to the front of the phone this time around (the XPlay 5 had it on the back), which doubles as a home button and flanked by two capacitive buttons. Vivo has assigned the back button on the right side (with the overview button on the left) with no option to swap them around. It’s fun annoying to me, but I was able to download a third party app that let me swap back. Phonemakers, please give us the option to customize capacitive buttons.
The fingerprint sensor is really solid, though, and the home button can be activated by pressing or tapping (a great option also found in Xiaomi phones). Every button feels sturdy and “premium”, so aside from the placement of the back button, I have zero complaints about the build of this phone.
Oddly, the XPlay 6 still uses Micro-USB instead of USB-C, but that doesn’t affect charging speed or data transfers. Vivo’s quick charge (dubbed the “Dual-Engine “Quick Charge”), works fast enough, in that same 12% to 15% bump per 10 minutes of charge like in just about every other phone. The phone’s got one speaker grill at the bottom, which is loud and clear, but the stereo speakers would have been nice.
Moving to internals, as mentioned the phone is still on Snapdragon 820, which is sort of dated by now. The phone is by no means slow, but there’s a slight pause whenever In the open intensive apps like Facebook after a while. It’s not going to get in the way of day-to-day use, just pointing out that there are faster phones on the market right now. Benchmarks back this up: the XPlay 6 scored a 1596 in single-core and 3813 in multi-core.
Vivo’s own OS, FunTouch, is okay. It’s not offensive like some other Chinese phones’ software (like Gionee’s Amigo OS), and it operates similar to iOS. For example, the quick toggles are triggered by swiping up from the bottom of the screen; the notification shade, then, is solely for notifications, which means it looks weirdly bare. Nonetheless, In slapped a Nova Launcher on it and called it a day. It’s no offense at the software — I just think the Nova looks grea, and I like having an app drawer.
Next up: the camera, battery life, etc
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