It starts by scouting for a well-lit area, where you raise your smartphone just above your head and tilt it at a certain angle to click a self-portrait of yourself. Dubbed as a ‘selfie’, the phenomenon has caught on like wildfire, raising the need for better front facing cameras in smartphones. Complying with the increasing demand, Chinese giant vivo launched the V5 selfie-centric smartphone (review) last year which boasted a 20MP front facing camera. Now, the company is back with an upgraded version of the same device dubbed the V5 Plus (review), which is why we decided to compare the two smartphones to see it is a worthy upgrade over its predecessor.
Table of Contents
Design and display
The vivo V5’s design was critiqued for being inspired by the Apple iPhone 7. With the V5 Plus, the company takes it one step further by imitating the position of the ports as well as the antenna bands as seen on the iPhone 7. However, that’s not to say that the design is bad. Talking about the devices in question, the V5 Plus is constructed entirely from metal, which gives it a huge bump over the V5, which uses plastic in its construction. 
The V5 Plus gets an upgrade in the display department as well and can be seen with a 5.5-inch full HD display this time around rather than an HD resolution display as was seen on its predecessor. However, the size of the screen as well as the placement of the fingerprint sensor within the home button is identical on both the devices.
Performance, storage and software
The vivo V5 uses an octa-core MediaTek MT6750 SoC coupled with 4GB of RAM for processing and computing. On the contrary, the V5 Plus is driven by a more powerful Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor and is aided with 4 gigs of RAM. Suffice it to say, users will find a substantial difference between the two smartphones while playing games and running intensive tasks. 
For storage, the vivo V5 ships with 32GB of internal storage. However, the smartphone does come with microSD card support to expand the storage up to 256GB. The vivo V5 Plus on the other hand comes with 64GB of internal storage, but omits the microSD card slot. Both the devices boot Android Marshmallow with a custom skin of Funtouch OS on top.
Camera, battery and connectivity
In the camera department, the vivo V5 gets a 20MP front facing sensor and a 13MP rear facing sensor. Both the camera modules come with their standalone flash units too. The V5 Plus on the other hand comes with a dual-camera setup on the front, featuring a pair of 20MP and 8MP sensors which are aided with a flash unit. On the back, the device gets a 16MP sensor with its separate flash unit. This makes it evident that the V5 Plus comes with a better camera setup, on the front as well as the back, which will surely translate into better digital stills.
Powering the vivo V5 is a 3,000mAh battery, which falls marginally short off the 3,055mAh one fuelling the newer V5 Plus. However, bear in mind that the vivo V5 comes with a lower resolution display and therefore, should be able to give users a better battery life. Both the smartphones come with standard connectivity options along with support for 4G LTE.
To sum it up, the vivo V5 Plus is a better smartphone than its predecessor in every category, making it worthy of an upgrade. However, seeing as it is priced relatively close to the OnePlus 3T, it will be interesting to see if its able to sway users to its doorsteps.
