Vivo V50e 5G Long-term Review: A stylish phone for photography, but not for power users

The V50e is an attractive phone with capable cameras that could have used a bit more processing muscle read more
Pros:
Premium design, slim and lightweight
Good build with IP69 ingress protection
Sharp and vibrant AMOLED display
Competent main camera and selfie camera
Good battery backup, 90W fast charging
Smooth UI, 3 years of OS and 4 years of security updates promised
Cons:
Should have used a more powerful processor and faster storage
Very few changes from its predecessor
Rating: 3.5/5
Price: Rs 28,999 to Rs 30,999
A budget of around Rs 30,000 in India lets smartphone makers either be a jack of all trades or a master of one. While ample storage, good display and battery backup is a given these days, the two key areas they need to choose between are cameras and processing power. While several manufacturers lean towards the latter in this budget, Vivo V series phones focus on the former.
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The Vivo V50e is the most affordable handset from their V50 series and yet promises to offer a lot of premiumness and competent photography performance. In doing so, what corners does it cut? Is it worth the asking price? How does it compare to the stiff competition in this segment? Let me tell you all of that and more.
Vivo V50e 5G: Design (4/5)
Though it continues with the design language of the V40 series, the V50e is one of the most elegant phones in this segment. The build quality and finish are pretty good, and the phone measures less than 7.5 mm in thickness. Despite the plastic back, it doesn't attract many fingerprints or smudge marks, especially the Pearl White variant we got for review.
Despite the plastic back, it doesn't attract many fingerprints or smudge marks
The curved display blends nicely into the frame and gives it a well-rounded look.
The curved display blends nicely into the frame and gives it a well-rounded look
There are no rough edges on the phone and it feels great in hand with a good weight distribution. The screen bezels are incredibly thin, which is great to see in midrange phones. The keyhole-shaped camera island looks good too. The phone weighs about 186 grams and sports an IP69 ingress protection rating, which not only protects it from rains but is good enough to do a bit of underwater photography in shallow waters without damaging the phone.
The keyhole-shaped camera island at the back looks good
The volume rocker as well as the power button are located along the right edge of the phone, and are easy to reach. The fingerprint scanner is placed too close to the bottom edge and is a bit of a stretch to reach; an inch higher on the screen would have been better.
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The volume rocker as well as the power button are located along the right edge of the phone
It is quite responsive though. The bottom edge has a SIM tray, a speaker and a USB-C charging port. A 3.5 mm headphone jack and a memory card slot are absent.
The bottom edge has a SIM tray, a speaker and a USB-C charging port
Vivo V50e 5G: Display (4/5)
The display on the V50e is quite good. It has a 10-bit 6.77-inch AMOLED screen with a Full HD+ resolution of 2392 x 1080 pixels, 120 Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ compliance and a peak brightness of 1800 nits. It may not be as bright as that on the Vivo V50 but is sufficiently bright even under bright sunlight. It has Diamond Shield Glass protection against scratches and I was quite pleased to see how narrow the bezels were, including the bottom one.
The V50e is one of the most elegant phones in this segment
The sharpness is excellent across the board and the colour reproduction is quite good in Standard mode. You have two more modes to try out - Professional and Bright, along with a handful of colour temperature adjustments. Bright mode seemed to provide the best results for me with lively and accurate colours and contrast.
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Vivo V50e 5G: Hardware and performance (3/5)
This is one area where Vivo could have certainly done better. The V50e is powered by a Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chip, the same one used in its predecessor, the Vivo V40e. Now, it is fine for a phone priced under 20K but not 30K. The competition is way ahead in this department. It is accompanied by 8 GB LPDDR4X RAM and one can choose between 128 GB or 256 GB UFS 2.2 storage. The competition now offers UFS 4.0 storage in this budget, including Vivo's sister brand, iQOO. The company could have opted for at least UFS 3.1 storage instead of the dated 2.2.
Coming back to the SoC, the Dimensity 7300 performs perfectly fine in day to day tasks like using social media apps, photography, browsing, watching videos or switching between multiple apps. It can handle some casual gaming too but one cannot indulge in serious graphics intensive gaming on this phone. The phone largely runs cool with no heating issues. We ran a few popular benchmarks to gauge its processing potential.
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In Geekbench 6, the V50e returned scores of 1033 and 2944 in single and multi-core tests, which puts it neck and neck with the 2-year old Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 SoC. In PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark, it scored 10,511, which is a good thousand points lower than the Qualcomm chip. In the 3D Mark Wild Life benchmark, it managed a score of 3138 at 18.8 average fps which won't exactly set the gaming world on fire. But as I said before, this phone is meant to be more camera focused than for power users or gamers.
Barring gaming, things are generally fine with little room for complaint. The speakers are loud enough with decent stereo separation. The call quality and reception were fine during testing on this 5G-ready phone. Wireless connectivity options include Bluetooth (version not specified) and dual-band WiFi. Wired data transfer is limited to USB 2.0 through the USB-C port.
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Vivo V50e 5G: OS and User interface (3.5/5)
The Vivo V50e 5G runs Android 15 with Funtouch OS 15 and May 2025 security update (at the time of testing). If you have used a Vivo or iQOO smartphone before, you would adjust to it straight away. The user interface is not too difficult to comprehend, even if you are switching from any non-Vivo Android phone. However, the phone does come with a handful of bloatware preloaded on the device, most of them being Vivo apps itself. Even worse, a majority of it cannot be uninstalled, barring Snapchat maybe.
While most apps reside peacefully, a couple of them like the stock browser and Vivo's app store can be a tad irritating due to unnecessary notifications. It's best to stick to the Google Play store for apps (which is very much available on the phone) and one of the popular browsers like Chrome or Firefox to circumvent that to an extent. Now for some good news - Vivo has promised three major OS updates and four years of security updates for the V50e, keeping it updated and secure for a reasonably long time.
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Vivo V50e 5G: Camera performance (3.5/5)
Now let's talk about the supposed USP of this phone, its camera department. The Vivo V50e has two cameras at the back with a combination of a 50MP primary camera with PDAF and optical image stabilisation (OIS) and an 8MP ultra-wide camera, along with the Aura Light ring flash. The primary camera has a Sony IMX882 sensor which does most of the heavy lifting. It captures some very good shots in good lighting with a good amount of detail and dynamic range and only slightly boosted colours. The output is quite pleasant. It does a perfectly acceptable job in low light too, and there too it preserves a good amount of detail while keeping the noise in check.
It has two cameras at the back along with the Aura Light ring flash
Vivo has replaced the 50MP ultra-wide camera on the V50 with a meagre 8MP unit here with 116-degrees FOV. Needless to say, it is not in the same league but does a surprisingly good job for an 8MP camera in proper lighting with fairly accurate colours. The captured images have reasonable detail for use on social media, but avoid pixel peeping there. The dynamic range is comparable to the main camera. The low-light results are average at best though and it would be best to stick to the main camera when the light drops.
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The biggest drawback of the ultra-wide camera is the lack of auto-focus, which deprives the camera department on the V50e of macro photography. However, as advertised, the portrait photography here is quite good, especially when clicking humans; you get a near perfect background and foreground separation. It doesn't work as well with plants and flowers though. There's also a Wedding Portrait Studio feature but I couldn't attend or gatecrash a wedding during the course of the review to test that feature.
There is no telephoto camera on this phone, but you do get a 2X zoom toggle in the camera app. It is very much digital zoom but the captured images come out pretty well and make you believe otherwise. They aren't lossless but perfectly usable. The 50MP front camera is quite impressive and will please the selfie enthusiasts. While it doesn't have the broadest of FOV, it does have auto-focus which is certainly handy. The skin tones look natural (when not using filters) and selfies have ample detail. The main camera as well as the front camera can record videos in up to 4K resolution. Captured footage is decent at best.
Vivo V50e 5G: Battery backup (4/5)
The battery backup on this phone is pretty good. The V50e has a 5600 mAh battery that easily lasts for a day and a half of moderate use. The company bundles a 90W fast charger that can charge the phone fully in under an hour. During our tests, it took 57 minutes to go from 1 to 100% using the bundled charger, which may not be the fastest around but perfectly acceptable.
The company bundles a 90W fast charger that can charge the phone fully in under an hour
Vivo V50e 5G: Price, verdict and alternatives
The Vivo V50e 5G is priced at Rs 28,999 for the 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage variant, and you can buy its 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage model for Rs 30,999. This is where Vivo could have done a little better by pricing it more aggressively, say around Rs 25,000. You will probably get it for that price in a couple of months in the festive sales. But at the moment, the competition around the 30K mark is at a different level. The Vivo V50e is not a bad phone at all and gets the basics right. It's just that the buyers now expect more than that in this segment.
Lets spare a minute to look at what's available at this price point in India for a more objective evaluation. You get phones like the Poco F6 and iQOO Neo 10R with Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip that are miles ahead of the Dimensity 7300 in the V50e. Then there's the Nord 4, again with a more powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 SoC and comparable camera performance. All of them have faster UFS 4.0 storage or better and higher resolution displays too.
Yes, this Vivo phone is more focused on photography than power, but then you also have phones like the Motorola Edge 60 Pro with a more rounded camera department with a telephoto camera as well as a better ultra-wide camera that offers macro mode. Thus the Vivo V50e is a tough sell at 30K, but around the 25K mark, it will get a lot more breathing space, and with its slim and attractive design, capable cameras and good battery backup, it certainly becomes a viable option in that budget.

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