Vivo V70 review: Premium design, good cameras, and lasting battery life

The Vivo V70 brings a refined matte-glass design, versatile 50MP cameras and 90W charging, but gaming performance, AI tools and pricing raise questions over its value proposition

The Vivo V70 is a new entrant in the premium mid-range smartphone segment in India. Akin to its predecessors, the Vivo V70 promises to deliver a premium camera experience and a refined design with the aim of appealing to a broader audience. Does it? Let us find out:

Design

The Vivo V70 departs from its predecessor in terms of design. While the Vivo V60 featured a vertical pill-shaped camera module, leaving out the ring light flash and ultra-wide-angle camera, the Vivo V70 includes them all to create a camera module that bears a strong resemblance to the iPhone 16 Pro series. Apart from that, the edges are well rounded this time, compared to the last generation, and the matte look exudes a premium feel.

 

 

The raised camera module makes the smartphone wobble on a flat surface. The weight distribution is fine, which means that you can use it for longer hours without one part of your hand feeling more tired than the others, which is something I experienced with the OPPO Find X9 Pro.

 

That is about comparing it with other smartphones or its predecessor. Let us talk about the series now. If I say that the Vivo V70 strikes an uncanny resemblance to its sibling, the Vivo V70 Elite, that would be an understatement. They look exactly the same — identical — it is like seeing the same phone in two places. The screen size is the same, the camera module is the same, the Vivo branding is in the same place, and even the colour variant that we received for review — Passion Red — and its weight are the same. I kept both smartphones adjacent to each other, and there was no difference at all. It was as if I was looking at the three Spider-Man characters from the multiverse standing in front of each other meme.

 

In case you do not get the idea of its comparison, the Vivo V70 sports a clean and premium look in a matte glass finish with the Vivo branding resting in the bottom left corner. The camera island features a glossy finish. The side frame on the right features the power and volume buttons. The left side remains clean without any physical buttons. The bottom frame houses a SIM tray, a USB-C port for charging and file transfer, and a speaker grille.

Rear camera performance

The Vivo V70 features a triple rear camera system comprising a 50MP Zeiss primary sensor, a 50MP Zeiss telephoto lens and an 8MP Zeiss ultra-wide unit. This setup allows shooting portraits across multiple focal lengths — 23mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and 100mm — offering flexibility depending on framing needs. Again, the exact same specifications are found in both the Vivo V70 Elite and Vivo V60.

 

Across focal lengths, the Vivo V70 retains solid detail and delivers colours that look natural rather than overly processed. The telephoto camera supports up to 100x zoom, though optical capability is limited. Shots remain sharp and well defined up to 10x, while 20x is usable with some softness creeping in. Beyond that, detail drops significantly, making higher zoom levels more practical for distant subjects such as buildings or the sky than for everyday photography. On the macro front, the camera performs notably well, capturing fine details whether you move in close or zoom from a slight distance. Colour presets such as Zeiss, Classic, Clear Blue and Macarons visibly alter the image tone, with the Zeiss profile offering a particularly balanced look.

 

Film mode shows minor inconsistencies in low or uneven lighting, where images can appear slightly washed out and skin tones occasionally look paler than in real life. Video recording maxes out at 4K 60fps, producing clear footage that meets expectations for this segment.

Front camera performance

The company said that the Vivo V70 features a 50MP Zeiss front camera, which is tailored for wide group selfies. However, when zoomed out in selfie mode, the zoom reduces from 1x to just 0.8x. Nonetheless, it captures strong detail even at arm’s length, with fine elements such as hair strands clearly visible at 1x. Portrait mode delivers accurate edge detection and clean background blur at both 1x and 2x. Selfies appear slightly warm in standard mode, while switching to Film mode introduces a cooler, subtly vintage colour tone without going monochrome.

 

Portrait mode also includes multiple facial adjustment tools, allowing users to modify face shape and features such as lips and nose in a controlled manner. For video, the front camera supports 4K recording at 60fps, which gives decent output.

Display and audio

The Vivo V70 has a 6.59-inch 1.5K resolution OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, support for HDR10+ and peak brightness rated at 5,000 nits. These are the exact same specifications as the Vivo V70 Elite. Coincidentally, these are again the same specifications found in the Vivo V60, except for the screen size, as the V60 sported a slightly larger 6.77-inch screen.

 

In regular use, the screen delivers clean and well-balanced visuals. Colours appear lively without being exaggerated. Outdoor visibility is dependable. The display remains legible under direct sunlight, but you might feel the absence of that extra punch. A marginal boost in brightness could have made it even better. As for audio, the Vivo V70 produces clear and sufficiently loud sound output. Volume levels are adequate for media consumption and casual gaming.

Performance

The Vivo V70 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, coupled with 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 4.1 storage. In comparison, the Vivo V60 offered the same processor but with a 16GB RAM option in addition to 8GB and 12GB. However, both the storage and RAM were of slower speed and bandwidth — UFS 2.2 and LPDDR4X. This is an important upgrade in light of soaring memory prices globally, as most high-end resources are now being directed to artificial intelligence compute.

 

That said, the Vivo V70 feels smooth in day-to-day operations, be it multitasking or casually browsing through apps. Apps open quickly and animations look fluid. Gaming is one aspect where it had a slightly tough time, with common mobile titles such as BGMI and Call of Duty Mobile showing occasional jittery performance. It did not happen very often, but I did encounter minor lags. A normal user might not notice the performance crunch, but I play these games daily across devices ranging from budget to flagship models such as the Google Pixel 10 Pro. Hence, I was able to notice those small details.

 

Thermal optimisation is also one area where I found the Vivo V70 to lag slightly. The device heated up to a certain extent while gaming. When compared side by side with the Vivo V70 Elite, the top model handled heat management slightly better than the base model. Lastly, as with the Vivo V70 Elite, the base model also misses out on adding frame-per-second control in the dedicated gaming mode.

Battery

The Vivo V70 packs a 6,500mAh battery and supports 90W fast charging. Notably, these are the same specifications offered in the V70 Elite, as well as in the V60.

 

In day-to-day usage, the V70 comfortably lasted close to a full day on moderate use. My routine included a few hours of gaming, regular browsing on Instagram and YouTube, along with streaming a couple of web series episodes. With heavier usage, however, you may find yourself reaching for the charger by late evening.

 

Charging speeds remain one of its strong points. The device goes from 0 to 100 per cent in roughly 50 minutes. Even a brief 10-minute plug-in session adds about 18–20 per cent battery, which is useful for quick top-ups before heading out.

AI features

The Vivo V70 ships with Android 16 with OriginOS 6 layered on top, bringing a suite of AI-driven tools aimed at productivity and photo enhancements. Beyond the handy Transcribe function, a few features stood out during regular use — though not always for the right reasons.

 

AI UHD is meant to sharpen and upscale images, and while it does improve apparent clarity, it tends to overly smooth faces in the process. Fine skin details such as wrinkles and natural texture are often replaced with a polished, slightly artificial finish.

 

AI Audio Noise Eraser, which claims to remove background sounds, music or voices from videos, worked well when stripping out background music in my testing. However, it struggled to consistently eliminate spoken voices within the frame.

 

Then there is AI Magic Weather, which swaps out the sky to simulate different conditions — such as turning a sunny afternoon into a dusky scene. The results were mixed: some edits looked convincing, while others appeared clearly edited, especially where the sky met buildings or other objects, with noticeable edges giving away the effect.

Verdict

The Vivo V70 impresses with its premium matte-glass design, vibrant 1.5K OLED display, lasting battery life backed by 90W fast charging and a versatile camera system that delivers natural colours, strong detail up to 10x zoom, capable macro shots and 4K 60fps video on both front and rear cameras. The selfie camera is detailed and feature-rich, while day-to-day performance feels smooth for regular tasks.

 

Though the Vivo V70 ticks most of the right boxes, it is not perfect. Gaming performance shows occasional jitters along with noticeable heating, the raised camera module causes wobble on flat surfaces and some AI tools feel inconsistent or overly aggressive in processing. Extreme zoom quality drops sharply beyond 20x, and certain modes such as Film and front-camera video introduce minor colour inconsistencies or noise.

 

That said, the Vivo V70 seems to be a mixed bag that offers little when compared to its predecessor. The most notable upgrades it offers over the Vivo V60 are a slightly smaller screen for more comfortable usage, LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage over LPDDR4X and UFS 2.2 storage, and a more premium appearance.

 

The Vivo V60 was priced at Rs 38,999 for the 8GB + 256GB variant, whereas the V70 is priced at Rs 45,999. If the aforementioned differences between the Vivo V60 and V70 seem worth the additional Rs 7,000 to you, then it may justify the purchase. 

Vivo V70: Pricing and variants

• 8GB RAM + 256GB storage: Rs 45,999
• 12GB RAM + 256GB storage: Rs 49,999
• Colour: Passion Red, Lemon Yellow

Vivo V70 unboxing

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by BSTech (@bstechofficial)