If only Kareena Kapoor had a high-end camera phone while she made this popular claim years ago, she could have accompanied it with a handful of selfies!
Phone self portraits have evolved rapidly, from being just a blurry image clicked by a VGA camera to really good-looking, bright pieces of art. The front camera of our mobile devices is becoming more popular than their rear counterparts. Certain mobile manufacturers have been quick to respond to this trend.
The recent buzz in the industry is the dual lens technology and many manufacturers like LG, HTC, Huawei have offered it with their rear cameras. But keeping in line with the selfie addiction, Vivo went a step ahead and has launched the V5 Plus that comes with a not one, but two front camera lenses. The V5 Plus is currently the only device up front a combo of a 20MP lens with an 8MP lens with a Sony IMX376 sensor. The first lens helps to create a high resolution images and the second provides depth of field, which helps to put more focus on the subject or the person and less focus on the background. Basically, one lens captures your face in all its glory and the second one enhances the background.
Professionals normally use the Bokeh lens to aesthetically enhance a portrait image by blurring the out-of-focus area. The V5 Plus has added this additional effect to its front camera, where you can adjust the aperture after clicking the image to blur the required area. For example while clicking selfies at crowded place, you can add more focus on your face and blur the background completely or the other way round. Apart from Bokeh, the front camera also comes with other modes like HDR, beautification, and different filters. Just like its predecessor the V5, this device also has "moonlight glow", which unlike a flash doesn’t splash light on your face and instead lights it up and gives better focus on your face during night or low light-conditions. We went on a selfie spree with this device for few days and liked that it could capture our images with finer details and good exposure. We really enjoyed the Bokeh effect that gave much more importance to our face. Definitely for the selfie addict! When compared to the intensive features of the front camera, the rear camera of 16MP seems just a little humble.
Vivo has managed to accommodate two lenses and still keep the front bezel thin for the V5 plus. Even the overall design is slim and sleek with a curved metal body in gold. The 5.5-inch display comes with a 5th generation Corning Gorilla glass protection.
A camera-intensive phone also requires an equally intensive processor, maybe that’s why Vivo has shifted from the MediaTek to a Snapdragon 652 processor. It comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage and runs Vivo’s own Funtouch OS 3.0 based on Android 6.0.
The V5 plus is a dual-SIM device with support for 4G LTE. The 3055mAh battery lasted us one whole day, even after clicking a number of selfies. It also has the fast charging technology and OTG support. It is available this week at Rs 27,980. Expect other makers to bring dual lenses to the selfie camera in 2017.
—IndiaTechOnline
