vivo V30 review

Funtouch OS 14 on top of Android 14

The vivo V30 launches with the latest proprietary Funtouch OS 14 based on Android 14. It's a heavily customized UI with plenty of features to go through.

Vivo promises 50 months of smooth operation without major slowdowns due to the system's intelligent control over background tasks.

The company doesn't explicitly commit to prolonged support, so are yet to hear how many major software updates the V30 will get. If the V30 Pro is anything to go by, the phone should get two major OS updates and three years of security patches for the V30 Pro.

Since we covered the Funtouch OS 14 extensively in the vivo X100 Pro review, we suggest giving the software section a read. Most features listed there are available on the V30.

Benchmark and sustained performance

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 was announced in late 2023, but it started appearing in smartphones in early 2024. It's a modern mid-range SoC based on TSMC's 4nm manufacturing process and promises performance and efficiency improvements over its predecessor, which isn't the one you think it is.

Qualcomm's naming scheme continues to be a mess as the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 slots between the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. So, the promised 15% CPU and 50% GPU gains are in the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 context. The SD 7+ Gen 2 remains the most powerful in the SD7 family.

With the semantics out of the way, let's see what the SD7 Gen 3 offers. It relies on an octa-core CPU with 1x2.63 GHz Cortex-A715 & 3x2.4 GHz Cortex-A715 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A510 cores and an Adreno 720 GPU. The system also supports up to LPDDR5 RAM.

The V30 ships in four variants - 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, 12GB/256GB and 12GB/512GB. We have the beefiest 12GB/512GB version in our office. All storage options are listed as UFS 2.2

We've discontinued GFXBench graphics benchmarking as the app is often banned/blacklisted on the phones we receive for review. The graphics performance ranking in 3D Mark is just as meaningful, so we suggest you refer to that one instead.

As you can see, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 inside the vivo V30 performs just as expected - it slots in between the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. Compared to its competitors, the V30 seems to be either on par or outperforming them by a small margin. The Dimensity 9000-powered OnePlus Nord 3 seems to be leading the pack in this price category, but you could make a case that this one is an exception, given that it outpaces the vivo V30 Pro even.

Regarding sustained performance, the vivo V30 passed our tests with flying colors. In the CPU throttle test, the handset maintained almost 90% of the CPU's theoretical performance and also kept the clock speeds steady, which is crucial for a smooth gaming experience.

CPU and GPU stress tests

The V30 breezed through the 3DMark GPU stress test as well, and not only did it maintain almost 100% of the GPU's performance, the device didn't feel warm after the test at all.