vivo V29 review

Funtouch 13 on top of Android 13

Just like the V27 family before it, the V29 runs Funtouch 13 on top of Android 13. The company disclosed its plans to offer two OS upgrades for the V29 and three years of security fixes - not the most generous update policy, but not too bad either.

Funtouch 13 remains an experience relatively detached from 'stock' Android, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Folder view • Settings menu

One of the useful proprietary features can be found in the recent apps menu. You can choose between the standard carousel formation and a horizontal tiles layout - sort of like MIUI, only scrollable horizontally. The setting is available right then and there - you don't need to look for it in the menus.

Recent apps • Recent apps • Pop-up • Spilt screen

The notification shade is pretty familiar, and Funtouch is staying away from Google's large bubble-style quick toggles - it's simple circular buttons here. The default accent color is blue and can be controlled via the Android 13 AOSP color palette interface. A powerful theming engine is still present.

The app drawer has an expandable recommended apps category on the top (most commonly used ones), whereas using the vertical scroller on the right would highlight the apps beginning with the selected letter.

Notification shade • Quick toggles • App drawer • Scroll by letter • Widgets next to the app drawer

The rest of the UI has plenty of non-stock bits. In the Dynamic Effects sub-menu, vivo has grouped a bunch of customization options for the home screen, lock screen and animation effects. There are even various charging and facial recognition animations.

Dynamic effects

The always-on display settings are in a different sub-menu, but the phone still gives you plenty of options to tinker with - a wide selection of animations, clock styles, colors, backgrounds.

Always-on display

Just like Samsung and its OneUI, Funtouch takes care of people with hearing problems, and you can calibrate the sound to be heard by elderly people or those with impaired hearing. Additionally, notifications and calls get separate volume sliders. The vibration intensity can be adjusted for calls and notifications independently. No system-wide equalizer is available for the loudspeaker, though, which could be either a negative or a positive, depending on how you look at it. An Audio Super Resolution toggle is thrown into the mix.

Sound options

The Smart motion menu holds a handful of familiar screen-on and screen-off gestures along with some new additions.

Holding the volume down key can be used to launch an app or do a certain task, although the list is limited to the camera app, turning on/off the torch, start recording audio, open Facebook, or open any custom app. The so-called Quick action feature doesn't work when playing music for obvious reasons. There still isn't a double-press option for Quick action, though.

Smart motion menu • Shortcuts and accessibility • Quick action • S-capture • Split-screen • Easy Touch

A dedicated Ultra Game Mode is available, and it has it all. Most of the features are about mitigating disturbance during gameplay or preventing certain apps from displaying notifications. One of the most intriguing features that have been around on vivo phones for a while is the ability to turn off the screen and keep the game running in the background. Especially useful for turn-based games or those requiring some sort of "farming" or "grinding".

Ultra Game mode

The Funtouch launcher also offers its own gallery, audio and video players, system manager. There is also a dedicated Themes app and an iManager app with various system tools.

Albums • Video • Music • Manager • Manager • Themes

Performance and benchmarks

The V29 is a bit of sidestep in terms of chipset when comparing against the V27. Qualcomm's somewhat aging Snapdragon 778G endures, even though newer models exist in the 7 series, and it's precisely the 778G that the V29 gets.

A familiar midrange SoC, the 778G features an octa-core CPU in a 1+3+4 configuration (1x2.4 GHz Cortex-A78 & 3x2.2 GHz Cortex-A78 & 4x1.9 GHz Cortex-A55) and you'll note how that differs from the V27 and the 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 & 6x Cortex-A510 CPU of its Dimensity 7200 - the Dimensity's processor uses the newer powerful cores and has them clocked higher, but the Snapdragon has more of the powerful cores, older and lower clocked as they may be.

Those differences show in GeekBench, where the V27 shows a notable advantage under single-core load, but the new model counters with higher numbers in multi-core testing. Our favorite midranger, the Galaxy A54, matches the V29 in single-core performance, and is only slightly behind under multi-threaded load. The SD 7 Gen 1-equipped HTC U23 Pro is about on par with the vivo, while the Xiaomi 13 Lite isn't doing quite as well with that same chip.

In Antutu, the V29 is somewhat behind the V27 again, but it does have a minor edge over the Galaxy A54, and also scores marginal victories against the SD 7 Gen 1 HTC and Xiaomi models.

Things get tough for the V29 in the graphics benchmarks, where it faces newer and more powerful GPUs. It doesn't help that, in the V29's case, the Adreno 642L in the SD778G needs to deal with more than the usual amount of pixels because of the higher-res display. Indeed, its fps numbers are the lowest of the bunch, when it comes to onscreen tests in GFXBench.

The V29 isn't winning any contests in the offscreen tests either, but at least here it's keeping up with other models with the SD778G.

In 3Dmark, the V29 is doing a similarly unremarkable job, though it is posting good numbers for its hardware - the competition simply has more powerful graphics hardware.

For what it's worth, the V29 does an excellent job at maintaining that graphics performance under sustained load - it showed virtually no decline in its results during the 20-minute 3DMark Wild Life Stress test. While not quite as stable under heavy CPU load, the phone still showed fairly good results in the CPU Throttling test, dropping below 80% of its peak performance after 40 minutes of processor calcs.

CPU Throttling test • 3DMark Wild Life stress test