Watered down cameras that can compete!
Part 3 of 4! Ya know, we think it would have probably been best if we have taken a look at the cameras first before the phone’s performance. Sadly, we can’t do that because we need to keep things consistent for the sake of the other reviews. We know, we did that mistake in some of our early reviews. Well, here it is now, the most important and most awaited part of the Vivo V30e review: the cameras!
The Vivo V30e comes with two cameras at the back and one at the front, making a grand total of three cameras. Math is power! The rear consists of a 50MP Sony IMX882 primary (the top camera) and an 8MP Sony IMX355 Ultrawide. Meanwhile, the front is a 32MP selfie camera. Typical things you would see on a phone of its type.
Also, as you can see, you cannot find the proud ZEISS logo anywhere, and the phone does not have its supposed premium filters and adjustments. However, the phone is still armed with a powerful flagship-like sensor with OIS. Should you be spending that PHP 18K or save it for the more powerful V30 Pro (or other phones)? Continue reading below!
50MP Primary: Top-of-the-Line Surprise
The phone’s camera has three pre-selected filters. These are vibrant (the default), textured, which gives a contrasty feel, and natural, which supposedly gives a more neutral reproduction to your images. Yes, these are the same filters you’d find on the V30 Pro, albeit this has no “ZEISS” label.
Being the lowest-end of the three phones, we’ve set our expectations low. However, the cameras are surprisingly good. It’s way too good for its price in fact. That’s what happens when you use a flagship-tier sensor (the Sony IMX882 is a no-nonsense sensor after all). Every photo in the gallery uses the “Vibrant” option, to keep things consistent. The resulting images are, just stated, vibrant. Though, not too vibrant that it causes colours to bleed and splash out, especially during the day.
However, we noticed that the phone struggled to keep a good dynamic range at night (without night mode) and in some areas, such as the “bumper car” label in the 2nd photo, is too bright. It also happens to put a lot of grain into low light images. There’s so much grain that you can basically have a rice cookout, not really a good sign for a phone appealing to photographers, no?
8MP ULTRAWIDE: Laughable Quality
Okay, “laughable” may be harsh but still, look at it. The quality jump is very noticeable from the 50MP shots. This is a recurring problem for almost every midrange smartphone and we doubt companies will seriously try to fix it by using a competent ultrawide. It’s like they’re only adding the ultrawide to say you have the option. At night, the images are very soft and grainy, in low light, the problem is the same. It’s only somewhat decent during the daylight but even that is a stretch, because, even without zooming in, you can tell that it lacks the clarity it desperately needs.
32MP Selfie: Expectations Reached and More
The Vivo V30e features a 32MP selfie camera that is surprisingly really good. Better than the Reno10 Pro we tested a few years back. Its viewing angle is large enough to fit five of your friends or relatives in one frame. We like the true-to-life colour accuracy of the phone, especially with facial tone, and good dynamic range. If there is something to complain here, it’s probably with how our faces were reconstructed. They are “cute” and unrealistic, something we have noticed in a lot of BBK’s phones. This is with beauty mode turned off too. We had every setting in its defaults.
PORTRAITS: Miss and no Hit
The Vivo V30 series prides itself on creating professional-like portrait shots, as if taken with a DSLR. Well, sadly, the Vivo V30e just missed its homework. The overprocessing of the images and its reliance of AI meant the background blur is artificial and generative, and you can terribly feel those effects. A dedicated telephoto sensor would have helped, just like on the Vivo V30 Pro. All these shots are captured on a f/4.0 aperture because we noticed that anything closer to f/2.0 is too strong of an effect. This also applies on the V30 Pro.
As you can see in some of the images, the phone misses heavily on some artifacts, such as green leaves or parts of the hair that make the blurring look unnatural. It’s so obvious, it’s baffling. We’re hoping the brand improves this oversight in their future models. We heard the V40 series is coming. We also don’t like how the aperture settings are not flexible. From f/4.0, you go down directly to f/2.8, and there is no room for f/3.2 or f/3.6. Even our OnePlus Nord is more flexible than that.
Unlike the Aura Ring light of the V30 Pro, we felt like the V30e’s Aura Ring light is more of a filler than a feature. It does not improve images in the slightest and merely is a glorified LED flash.
NIGHT MODE: Multitasking Is Hard
Every phone has a dedicated night mode, even down to the budget ones. So, it’s expected that the Vivo V30e, a phone priced at PHP 17,990 should also have one. Of course, we’re going to use it.
It takes a bit of time, roughly around 1-3 seconds of shutter, for the phone to take the shot, process it, then gives you the final result. As we’ve seen in Part 2, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset this phone is using, performs poorly when it comes to multitasking, so creating night shots feels like a chore for the chip.
Sadly though, we’re not impressed with the night shots. While it is brighter than auto mode, the phone takes it overboard. We even had to remove an image here because it’s both blurry and oversharpened. How can a phone do that is beyond us but frankly, quite an achievement. It does improve dynamic range when you take a picture at very specific angles, such as the Emerson building, but most of the time the contrast is more powerful, resulting in a flaky, grim-looking scenery. Did we forget to mention that grain still remains in the photos?
50MP Shot: Storage Hog
Aside from Virtual RAM, full-frame 50MP mode must be one of the gimmickiest things brands put on a smartphone. This mode is useful if you’re putting images on a billboard or you’re using it for any art form that requires a huge canvas but those are very specific situations. If you’re planning to upload online, just stick to auto mode. The compression will make this feature redundant.
VIDEO: Surprisingly Good. Why Didn’t They Talk About This?
As naturally we would expect, the Vivo V30e can record videos of up to 4K@30fps. Only 720p and 1080p have 60fps capability, and the phone lacks OIS, unlike the V30 Pro.
Since Vivo did not particularly highlight video capabilities, we kept our expectations low. Once again, the phone has set its expectations far and beyond. The video quality for 1080p and 4K are surprisingly good, even if we were walking. It is shaky as expected from a phone lacking OIS, but the colour reproduction is good, sound is detailed and high quality (just use another phone’s or another PC’s speakers, okay?), and we don’t see signs of tearing.
Ah finally, we are DONE with the cameras. Part four is next. This is where we make our final conclusion in this research paper (sort of). Stay tuned, fellow techies!