Vivo V30e First impressions: similar design, new camera

Vivo’s ‘e’ branded smartphones under its V series are positioned just below its vanilla V series. New sub-R smartphones are released every year. 30,000 prices and slightly toned down specs, but aim to offer impressive cameras for their selling price. For 2024, after the launch of Vivo V30 Pro and Vivo V30, the brand launched the Vivo V30e in India.

The Vivo V30e comes in two variants. The base variant has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, priced at Rs. 27,999. The second variant offers 256GB of storage and is priced at Rs. 29,999 in India. Both variants use LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage.

The variants are available in two finishes – Velvet Red and Silk Blue. Both colors have a two-tone back panel that is a combination of matte and glossy finishes, but uses different materials. The Velvet Red color option uses a glass back, while the Silk Blue option has a back panel that is made up of a plastic composite sheet. Because of this, the two colorways have slightly different sizes. The Velvet Red weighs 188 grams and is 7.75 mm thick, while the Silk Blue color weighs 179 grams and is 7.65 mm thick.

We got the Velvet Red color option. The smartphone features a glossy matte back panel with a glossy part that has a checkered pattern. It is a very dark color and almost looks dark brown or even black from some angles. The smartphone uses a circular camera module that houses the dual rear camera setup with a golden stripe. It also surrounds it and bears the Vivo logo at the bottom.

The Velvet Red color option of the Vivo V30e

The Vivo V30e has chrome side rails with the power button and volume buttons on the right, a hybrid SIM slot, a USB 2.0 Type-C port, a microphone and speaker at the bottom and another noise-canceling microphone at the top. The smartphone is rated IP64 for dust and water resistance, which is expected at this price point, given that some lower-priced smartphones offer better.

The phone has a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel with curved edges with a 120Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels. Vivo claims a peak brightness of 1300 nits and also features the in-display fingerprint sensor. There is no official word from the brand whether it uses some version of Corning’s Gorilla Glass or not.

The V30e will receive three years of Android updates and four years of security patches

The smartphone runs on Vivo’s Funtouch OS 14 which is based on Android 14, has some pre-installed apps of which only some can be uninstalled. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC, which we recently saw on the Realme 12 Pro 5G and the Honor X9b, which also happens to be a direct competitor to the V30e.

The dual rear camera setup consists of a 50-megapixel primary camera with f/1.79 aperture and optical image stabilization (OIS) and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture. The camera interface also offers 2X digital zoom, which uses the main camera.

The camera module does not protrude much and the smartphone does not wobble on a table

The main camera can shoot videos at up to 4K 30fps in its native zoom as well as 2x zoom. The ultra-wide camera can only record videos at 1080p 30fps. The smartphone is also equipped with a circular aura flash, which we previously saw on the Vivo V29 Pro. It can change the color temperature to adapt to the lighting situation.

For the front camera, the V30e features a 50-megapixel f/2.45 aperture camera that can shoot videos up to 4K 30fps. We will test its full capabilities in our review.

Powering the phone is a 5,500mAh battery that can be charged using the included 44W charging adapter. The Vivo V30e competes with the Realme 12 Pro and Honor X9b with its sub-R. 30,000 price and similar specifications. But how well does it perform in real-world use? We’ll find out in our full Vivo V30e review coming soon.