Oh Snap…dragon
When you think of performance, you don’t immediately think of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. We already have some problems with the chipset, and our colleagues already told us how mediocre it is for a Snapdragon chip, yet many brands would choose it still for their midrange devices. The Vivo V30e is one of them. This chipset is not the newest, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 just got released. Though, that chipset also has its own problems. Its main criticism was that the chip is mainly just a rebranded Snapdragon 695 from 2021 with little to no changes, making it a lot weaker than the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. This is why that chip was released with little to no fanfare and no brands ever eagerly announced it to be used on one of their phones, and others stayed with Snapdragon 6 Gen 1.
The Vivo V30e has 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB UFS 2.2 ROM. From that 256GB, about 220GB is usable. The phone definitely has some potential power to it but due to the chipset being unoptimized and weak, (DeviceInfoHW reports that the phone has a 4+4 setup consisting of a Cortex-A78 @ 2.2GHz and Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz) the phone couldn’t reach this potential power. Also, note that the V30e was released in 2024 while the chip is two years behind. It also does not help that it is fabricated by Samsung, though on a 4nm process. You’ll see why later. A better option would have been a 2+6 setup, which is usually far more optimized. 4+3+1 is normally only reserved for flagships.
The MediaTek equivalent of the chip is the Dimensity 7050 (aka Dimensity 1100). However, unlike the Snapdragon chip, the Dimensity 7050 is manufactured by TSMC under a 6nm process and comes with a newer, yet more stable 2+6 architecture.
BENCHMARKS: Mediocre to the Core
As always, we tested the phone through benchmarks. These include the classics like AnTuTu v10 and Geekbench 6. To reiterate, the Vivo V30e runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset, rivaling the likes of the Honor X9b. This is a 4nm chipset fabbed by Samsung themselves. That alone is already questionable. Don’t worry, we also ran the phone through PCMark to test the battery. You’ll be amazed at the results.
The Vivo V30e performed as expected within benchmarks. Using AnTuTu v10, the phone scored 543,494 points, which is just as expected for this type of device. The Vivo V30e has 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 2.2 ROM.
On Geekbench 6, the phone scored 2648 points on a multi-core CPU, 862 points on a single-core CPU, 1351 points rendered through OpenGL for GPU, and 1764 points through Vulkan. When you check various reviews of the Vivo V30e, you may see some varying yet super close scores. This means there is no cheating involved and the phone performed as expected when put through the pressure. Frankly, in 2016 this is impressive but these days, it’s considered average. How far technology has come.
For the CPU stress test, we tested the phone twice. The first with a 15-minute interval and the other at a 60-minute interval. Both of these tests are tested within 20 threads. This was done so that we could know how much the phone would throttle on a given time scale. Does the phone throttle more if we pressure it longer? Add that to your thesis hypothesis! Note that the app has a disclaimer saying it could be inaccurate but from the tests we’ve seen, we’d say it’s done a pretty decent job so far.
To be precise, the phone was tested in a cold room, about 26-degrees Celsius, placed on a table, and at 100% charge without any background apps or notifications, and at a brightness set adequately, for both tests. In the first test, the phone throttled to 95% of its performance. This means that the phone heated up rapidly and thus, it needed to optimize its temperature frequently to maintain an optimized performance. Though, this came with a decent compromise. It surprisingly performed nearly perfectly most of the time despite throttling, consistently reaching 90-100% peak performance. The temperature also remained consistent during the first 15 minutes.
The second CPU test is different. It was not promising. During the first 5 minutes, the phone only performed 80% of its peak performance and has a yellowish hue for the temperature in the graph. The CPU attempted to perform as well as it could, but it was struggling. It did reach 100% peak performance at a decent temperature at around the 10-minute mark but quickly throttled again. During the next few minutes, the CPU maintained a temperature of 50°C and it wasn’t until the 25-minute mark until it tried performing highly again. From this, we can conclude that the CPU is not yet optimized or ready for prolonged gaming. We honestly also do not recommend gaming on this phone for long either, seeing as how we’re harsh about the chipset.
GAMING TEST: Struggle is Real!
Genshin Impact is having a new event today, probably as a prologue to the upcoming Version 5.0 update. In version 4.7, you’ll get to visit the magical storybook world of Simulanka, wherein different characters play different roles, and you as the traveler, is on a quest to defeat the so-called “evil dragon”. The event sadly only lasts 30 days but comes with several goodies and minigames for you to try. Plus, Nilou’s banner marks an amazing return here.
Aside from Genshin, we also tested the phone on several other games. Mostly the mainstream ones, such as Real Racing 3, Mobile Legends, Honor of Kings, Honkai Star Rail, and Call of Duty Mobile. Warzone is not included because, if that game can fry even the RedMagics with a cooling fan, we don’t think the Vivo V30e with its puny chipset, has a chance.
By the way, just like what we do for every one of these gaming tests, we record the games while playing them. The Qualcomm Snapdragon chip inside can barely handle that. For games like Genshin, we noticed that the sound would chip or go haywire while recording, and the phone would throttle real fast. So, you know the CPU test isn’t lying. We also noticed it could not handle playing Genshin while opening Facebook Messenger chat bubbles, and screen recording all at the same time without the phone getting weak. Since the phone is using auto mode, it will activate 120Hz refresh rate to any game that supports it. Genshin is one of them. Also yes, that game is in its default low-quality settings. MiHoYo (Hoyoverse) also changed the rules to their games so that they could still run on chipsets not surpassing the recommended ones. So, the graphics in Genshin are… well, not the highest quality you would see.
As for other games like Mobile Legends, the phone is, unsurprisingly, able to handle it even with HFR activated. It’s not exactly a demanding game, as even our weakest device to test, the Tecno Spark Go, can run it on the lowest quality just fine.
The worst part in all this was that some games are experiencing connectivity issues, which we have never experienced on other devices like the OnePlus Nord 3, the Vivo V30 Pro, and the Tecno Spark Go. Oddly, while playing Honor of Kings, the pings go up to 89ms which usually is not the case for our aforementioned phones which only go up to 50ms. This is not just in HoK, too. Even in Mobile Legends we were having some connectivity issues. The phone is on Wi-Fi-only as we did not insert a SIM Card in, nor do we have plans to. This is the main reason why are we so harsh about it.
BATTERY TEST: Headstrong, Efficiency Compensated.
What the Vivo V30e lacked in performance, came back with a very good battery life. This is the first phone we’ve ever tested that surpassed the 16-hour mark. 20 hours and 11 minutes on PCMark 3.0 is very impressive. We’ve seen flagship phones that die faster than this. And, it’s not just benchmarks. We were able to use the phone casually and hardcore throughout the day and we’re surprised to see we still have about 40% battery left. That never happened to us before. Although, to be fair, the phone was running its default settings. This means auto refresh rate, Wi-Fi-enabled, no data, and AOD off. This is still very impressive for a midrange phone and frankly, you’ll have lots of fun taking so many pictures and videos with the V30e.
The Vivo V30e came equipped with a 44W charging brick and cable. The cable is white and features a USB-A to USB-C connection. It’s also USB-C 2.0, not the 3.0 as with flagships that support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge.
The phone was drained dead after the PCMark battery endurance test was finished. That way, we can measure how long would it take for the phone to charge from an empty battery to full. It took about 1 hour and 30 minutes for the V30e to charge from this time frame which is frankly pretty slow. It also matches the 0-50% time, at around 45 minutes. Though, this time is expected for a phone only supporting 44W of charging. For a wider context, the Vivo V30 Pro took almost an hour to charge from an empty battery to full, and that has 80W, so this is consistent.
So, that’s all for the performance testing! The next part revolves around the cameras, and these are its main features. It’s going to be exciting, techies. Stay tuned!
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