vivo V17 Pro review

Design

The vivo V17 Pro was designed to impress, and you can tell it right away. Its cutout-free display and dazzling back are instant attention grabbers, while its quad-camera setup, impressive as is, contributes to no hump whatsoever!

The vivo V17 Pro is a dual-glass smartphone, as the majority of the modern smartphones. It has a flat piece Gorilla Glass 6 shielding the screen and a curved Gorilla 6 at the back done in glacier white reflective paint.

The font is all screen. Literally. The 6.44" AMOLED screen has minimum bezels, isn't disturbed by any cutouts, and is as immersive as they come. There is a grille etched into the screen's enclosure at the top - it is not the actual earpiece but a pass-through for the real one that sits on the pop-up module beneath.

There is an under-screen fingerprint scanner behind the AMOLED. It is placed around the bottom and is of the optical kind. Its place lights up upon pickup detection, so you won't need to wake up the screen every time. The sensor itself is fast and mostly accurate and it is among the better ones you can get today on a smartphone.

The pop-up piece is now larger as it houses two selfie snappers - the 8MP ultrawide shooter is left of the earpiece, while the primary 32MP cam is on the right. You can't notice it at first, but there is a small LED fill flash at the center for low-light selfies. The front camera also supports Night Mode, so we imagine this flash will be used rarely, if at all.

The selfie camera has advanced drop detection and retracts automatically if a sudden change in position or movement is detected. We tried this and indeed the thing goes down automatically, but it is moving so slow which renders the fall detection pointless - if the phone falls on to its top while the module is still out, we fear it will break then and there.

The back of our vivo V17 Pro is icy blue or as vivo calls it Glacier White or Crystal Sky - depending on the market. It looks indeed like a bluish white, but it is very reflective and refracts all kind of colors and lights in a different way. So, we'd describe this as chameleonic white and because of the bright colors, you can barely see any fingerprints or smudges on it.

The Gorilla Glass 6 is bent towards the longer edges and vivo has applied a thin and also curved protector on it. It is not a glass shield though, but a cheap thin film and it diminishes the dazzling looks as it gets all smudgy in no time. So, we peeled it off in mere hours.

The quad-camera setup is the only interesting thing at the back, and it is separated from the rest of the surface with a thin metal frame. There is no camera hump, the whole thing sits flush with the back, which is quite the achievement. The top snapper is 8MP ultrawide, the primary 48MP shooter is second, then comes the LED flash, followed by the 2MP depth sensor, and last one is the 13MP zoom camera.

There is this solid white case that comes as part of the V17 bundle and it will keep the phone quite safe. But it is really stiff and is quite an adventure to put the V17 in there and will cover its good looks. Then it has a cap on the USB-C port, which gets annoying each time you have to charge the phone.

But the real problem comes when you decide to get the V17 Pro out of this case. It's close to impossible to do so without breaking something - the case, the phone, or your nails. So, considered yourself warned about this if you opt to buy the V17 Pro.

The frame of the V17 Pro may look and feel metal, but it's made of plastic alright. It is thin and a bit curved, so don't expect any grip from it. On top of the frame around the pop-up are the 3.5mm jack and the second mic, while the bottom has the USB-C port, the dual-SIM tray and the loudspeaker. The mic pinhole is right next to the SIM tray and it can easily be mistaken for the SIM ejection hole, which is far from ideal.

The V17 has a dedicated assistant key on its left side, while on the right are the usual volume and power keys.

The vivo V17 Pro measures 159 x 74.7 x 9.8 mm - about 2mm taller and 1mm thicker than the V15 Pro. It weighs 202 grams, 16g heavier than the V15.

The vivo V17 Pro is a beautiful smartphone with solid build and immersive display. It is not waterproof and is as slippery as it looks, but most of the phones today are so we can't hold the non-existent grip against it. Overall, we are happy with the vivo V17 Pro and the only thing we'd change if we had the power was the supplied case.