Having been an iPhone user for the last decade, I didn’t know what to expect with the jump not only to a new revision of Apple’s mobile phone, but the huge leap to an entirely different operating system. It’s  a jump that will fill many with apprehension, but taking the chance on testing out the Vivo Y70 over the last few months, I very quickly learned that I shouldn’t have worried about the change.
The Vivo Y70 is great out of the box, with the most popular and essential apps already installed, and a smooth and seamless start up. Transferring all of your contacts and data over is simple, regardless of which phone you’re coming over from. In essence, you can go from box to actually using the Vivo Y70 in only a few minutes. With it’s ability to fast charge, you’re never without it very long either.
Although its size is on the long side, it quickly feels natural to use owing to some excellent design decisions on button placement. In fact, the only issue that arose during testing is with the space bar on the keyboard being a touch (pun intended) too close to the button that minimises the app you’re in, resulting in a fair few occasions where I closed the app mid sentence. That’s a minor gripe and something you can get used to.
The screen is a 6.44 inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels, so it’s vast compared to my regular iPhone 8 and absolutely everything is crisp and clear. The mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 powering the device and 8GB of RAM are more than enough for day-to-day usage, whether it’s web browsing, emails, watching video on YouTube and TikTok, or a little bit of gaming. Apps open and close with barely any loading times at all. The phone has thumbprint recognition built into the screen for unlocking and other features, which works reliably, creating a convenient overall experience when using the Y70.
In terms of power, the battery life here is decent, based on some fairly heavy usage. During our time with the Vivo Y70, we ran through the whole battery in roughly a day and a half, which is obviously better than most iPhone models (all tea, no shade). If you do run out in a pinch, the battery can be fast charged via its USB-C port to 65% in only 30 minutes, which is awesome.
Being a gaming establishment, we obviously had to check out the capability to play games on here, and both native games and those from cloud services such as Xbox Game Pass run smoothly with minimal issues, although the latter is somewhat tied to your internet service. The screen is the perfect size and the picture quality is satisfyingly detailed even in taxing games, though the mid-range chipset is sensibly only paired with a 60Hz screen. As it’s Android, it’s compatible with most Bluetooth controls pads if you aren’t a fan of touch screen controls.
The phone’s Funtouch 11 OS (built on Android 10) has a few tweaks with gaming in mind, with the ability to block notifications while playing and a feature that reduces the likelihood of errant touch screen presses. The biggest feature is an esports mode that enables an adaptive frame rate and allocates more of the chipset resources to the game.
I threw several games at it, from spending hours in Genshin Impact with both touch and button controls, to kicking back with Fire Emblem Heroes, and Call of Duty Mobile, which looks gorgeous on the screen and plays really well in spite of playing with touch controls. Whatever I played, it took it in its stride, and it shows the versatility of modern mid-range Android phones.
If the 128gb of internal storage isn’t enough for you, the phone has a microSDXC slot to expand this storage, alongside the two SIM card slots. This being said, even with all the games I have downloaded and pictures, I have taken haven’t even scratched the internal memory, so it would need really hard use of that internal storage to deplete it enough for additional being needed.
The camera is where the biggest step up comes compared to the humble iPhone 8 I’ve owned for the last few years. The 48 megapixel outward camera takes photos so clear that we wish we had somewhere to go in the last couple of months to let out inner photographer out. This being said, I got a lot of use out of the selfie camera and it’s the best I’ve ever looked, if I’m honest.
Coupled with 4K/30fps video capability on the main camera and features such as shutter timers, night mode, slo-mo mode, time-lapses, the ability to frame portraits and watermark images, the Vivo Y70 is a triumph in the camera department. Price-wise, it sits at around the £280 mark, which is a pretty reasonable price for the features and tech inside it.
There’s a lot of value to be found with the Vivo Y70. Between the excellent camera, fast running speed and considerable out-of-the-box features and apps, this phone offers a lot to users. The fast charge feature is a blessing, and Vivo clearly considered what people would want for using this model for gaming. A decent mobile phone, easy to use, and lightning fast in action.
