The vivo V50 Lite is touted as the brand’s slimmest phone with the largest battery capacity to date—all the while being tagged at a competitive price point. But is it more than its look, its battery, and its price? Let’s find out.
Design: 4/5
The vivo V50 Lite comes to the Philippines in three colorways: Phantom Black, Titanium Gold, and Fantasy Purple. We got a sample of that last palette, and as with most non-black vivo color schemes—particularly in the brand’s V segment—it is quite flamboyant. It combines purple and pink hues, along with feather-like swatches that dance when hit by light.
The oblong-shaped camera island juts out and sits on the upper left of the back housing and contains three imaging modules. The topmost and the largest is the 50MP main shooter. Below it is the 8MP ultra-wide lens. The bottommost is vivo’s signature Aura Light system, which provides more balanced white fill-light in low-light situations versus a conventional flash module. The vivo branding mark is present on the bottom left.
The phone has a high-gloss frame with a metallic finish. Along the right edge are the power and volume buttons; the bottom edge has the primary speaker grille, the USB-C port, a microphone pinhole, and the dual nano-SIM tray; the left edge is bare; and the top edge has another microphone pinhole and a secondary speaker grille.
The front has the sizeable 6.77-inch FHD+ AMOLED display which occupies a class-topping 94.2% of the forward real estate. A top-aligned punch hole houses the 32MP selfie camera.
While the layout is standard fare, the V50 Lite’s palette makes it visually standout from a lineup of its peers.
Hardware: 4/5
Running the vivo V50 Lite is an octa-core Mediatek Dimensity 6300 processor with two high-performance Cortex-A76 cores ticking at 2.4GHz and six power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores humming at 2.0GHz. This 6nm chip is paired in our review unit with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of non-expandable storage, but it is also available in a 12GB RAM and 512GB ROM variant. While the processor is two years old as of writing, it strikes a good balance between affordability and performance that won’t leave users wanting.
The aforementioned 6.77-inch AMOLED display has a 2392 x 1080px resolution resulting in a pixel density of 387ppi. It peaks at a bright 1800 nits with SGS Low Blue Light Certification to ensure your eyes won’t be as easily fried during long-use sessions. The refresh rate maxes out at 120Hz for fluid visuals—as long as the processor is able to fully drive it.
The vivo V50 Lite’s camera setup is headlined by a 1/1.95-inch-large 50MP Sony IMX882 sensor with an f/1.8 aperture, complemented by an 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera with a 120° field of view. Meanwhile, a 32MP f/2.5 front camera handles selfie duties.
Beyond these key spec lines, the vivo V50 Lite also boasts a robust build and a robust battery. It is IP65 dust and water resistant and has SGS Five-Star Drop Resistance Certification, ensuring protection against accidental spills and falls. Meanwhile, its battery is rated at a humongous 6500mAh BlueVolt with a measured 5-year battery health at up to 1,700 charging cycles. It charges with a bundled 90W vivo FlashCharge power brick and USB-C cable which claims a 50% charge rate for just 20-minutes, and a full charge in just 59 minutes.
.In case you need it to, the vivo V50 Lite doubles as a powerbank and is capable of reverse charging your other devices.
All that tech is crammed into a 7.79mm thin and 196g body, making it one of the sveltest phones around despite its sizable power pack.
User Experience: 4/5
The selling point of the vivo V50 Lite—besides its affordable price tag—is its battery, so let’s start with that. In the PCMark Work 3.0 Battery Life test which took the phone from 100% to 20% battery life at maximum volume and at 50% brightness, the vivo V50 Lite chugged for an astounding 22 hours and 14 minutes. This is the longest battery life out of any phone I have tested! Charging the phone from completely dead to full with the bundled 90W vivo FlashCharge power brick and cable, the V50 Lite took in 24% of power in 15 minutes, 46% in half an hour, and 100% in just over an hour. The charging speed may not exactly be as advertised, but it is still blazing fast considering the V50 Lite’s sizeable fuel tank.
In contrast, the synthetic benchmark performance of the vivo V50 Lite was a bit tamer than its battery performance, though still respectable. It scored 9116 in PCMark Work 3.0 Performance; 1356 in 3DMark Wild Life; 736 in Geekbench 6 CPU Single-Core; 1897 in Geekbench 6 CPU Multi-Core; and 1454 in Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL. For storage speeds, it scored 242.95 MB/s and 395.40 MB/s in the Cross Platform Disk Test Sequential Write and Read tests, respectively.
For gaming, the vivo V50 Lite is able to run even more graphically-intensive games, some even at maximum settings. Of course, consistently smooth performance will necessitate tuning down some eye candy. For example, Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Diablo Immortal, NBA 2K Mobile, and XCOM 2 Collection will all run and are all playable even with everything cranked up. However, visually-busy scenes make the frames stutter. Dropping down to medium graphics presets solves this problem. Competitive titles such as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Call of Duty Mobile run without any hiccups.
You also get decent shooters with the vivo V50 Lite. Photos from the main and selfie cameras are pretty good, with decent dynamic range. Shots from the ultra-wide camera are expectedly darker, though the automatic post-processing takes care of the underexposed areas.
The Aura Light also does a great job of providing well-lit, more flatteringly-exposed shots.
For even better shots, the vivo V50 Lite comes with AI Erase 2.0 to remove unwanted stray elements from photos.
Value: 4.5/5
Priced for as low as PHP13,999, the vivo V50 Lite is a definite steal. It may not be the most powerful phone out there but you get more than what you pay for. It can still run daily tasks smoothly and even demanding games at more than playable frame rates. The cameras are also quite decent and are backed by vivo’s signature Aura Light module. Add a battery that won’t quit, and you have a smartphone that is more than worthy of being your daily driver.
Bottomline
If you’re looking for a phone that can go on and on and on at a price that won’t break the bank, then look no further than the vivo V50 Lite.
What’s Hot
- Long battery life
- Fully charges in around an hour
- Solid overall performance
- Competitive price tag
What’s Not
- Slow storage read and write speeds
Specifications
- Display: 6.77-inch, 2392 x 1080px, FHD+ AMOLED with 387 ppi; 120Hz refresh rate; 1,800 nits peak brightness; DCI-P3 wide color gamut; SGS Low Blue Light Certification; 94.2% screen-to-body ratio
- Processor: Mediatek Dimensity 6300
- OS: Funtouch OS 15 (Android 15)
- RAM: 8GB RAM
- Storage: 256GB
- Camera: 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX882 (main rear); 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide (secondary rear); 32MP f/2.5 (front)
- Connectivity: 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, OTG, USB 2.0 Type-C, dual nano-SIM
- Battery: 6,500mAh BlueVolt, 90W vivo FlashCharge, 5-year battery health
- Others: In-display Optical Fingerprint Scanner; Face Unlock; reverse charging; SGS 5-Star Drop Resistance; MIL-STD 810H Military-Grade Certification; IP65 dust and water resistance; Aura Light; AI Erase 2.0
- Dimensions: 163.77 x 76.28 x 7.79 mm
- Weight: 197g
- Colors: Phantom Black, Titanium Gold, Fantasy Purple
- Pricing:
- 8+256 (4G) PHP13,999
- 8+256 (5G) PHP16,999
- 12+512 (5G) PHP19,999
Words and Photos by Chris Noel Hidalgo
Also published in GADGETS MAGAZINE Volume 25 Issue No. 10