vivo X50 hands-on review

Software and Performance

Our vivo X50 was running Funtouch OS 10.5 on top of Android 10 with the June security patch at the time of writing at the end of July.

Funtouch OS has come a long way from its early days and is now quite pleasant to use for the most part. For one, there isn't a ton of bloatware installed right out of the box and our review unit was quite clean. Most of the bloatware came from Google itself, with dedicated icons for the Google Assistant, Google Lens, and Google Files cluttering up the app drawer even though there are other ways to access these features.

vivo has its own V-Appstore on the device from where you can download additional apps but as usual, we found it completely useless for anyone outside of China where the Play Store is available. Opening the V-Appstore is also like playing minesweeper, where you are constantly bombarded by pop-ups to install apps and you have to do your best to navigate around this minefield. The only advantage we found to the V-Appstore is that it has a feature that lets you mark and uninstall multiple apps at once, which you can't do from the launcher.

Speaking of launchers, it's rather limited in that you can't do things like having a custom icon pack or much in the way of organizing the app drawer. It's also annoying that vivo chooses to have swipe down from the homescreen be a shortcut for the system-wide search function rather than the notification shade. There's also no way to change this other than downloading a different launcher. An option in the settings to change the default swipe down gesture to notification shade would make things a lot easier, especially since it is fast becoming the default across Android OEMs. Anyone not doing it just sticks out at this point.

Funtouch OS 10.5

The Settings app gets a while getting used to if you are coming from another Android phone brand. As with several other Chinese OEMs, vivo has moved things around but it's nothing you can't figure out after a few days with the phone.

The best reason to go through the Settings app is to just delve through the ocean of customizable options available. You can adjust everything from the animation that your phone plays when it scans your finger, to the face unlock animation, the animation when a charger is plugged in, the animation of the homescreen icons when you unlock your phone and even the direction the display dims or lights up when you lock or unlock your phone.

Features and settings

The phone also lets you set an animation that plays when you receive a notification. It's a ring of light that goes around the edge of the display for every new notification. This can play when the screen is off and also when it's on. You can choose the animation, color, and thickness of the ring and also which applications trigger it with their notifications.

There's also an Ultra Game Mode, which does the usual optimization of resources and notifications when you are playing a game. It also includes other features like a surround sound feature for games, haptic feedback for select games, and a 'Bot Mode' that keeps the game running even if you turn off the screen. There are honestly way too many features here to list and some of them may be of interest to you if you are into mobile gaming.

Ultra Game Mode

The same can be said for the rest of the Settings app, which is chock full of endless features for you to explore. Not all of them will be useful but there should be something here for everyone.

The vivo X50 also includes the gesture-based navigation system that everyone is including these days. However, vivo's implementation is a bit lackluster. There is a small delay every time you have to swipe up to go home and also when you swipe and hold for the app switcher. The gesture mode also has no way to quickly switch to the last used app. The keyboard also tends to go far too low in this mode. This made us want to stick to the on-screen navigation buttons for the duration of testing.

Navigation options

The phone also has a dark mode like most phones these days and you can also choose to have the background completely black or a dark gray using a slider. The dark mode worked fine until we came across the Twitter app, which vivo decided to force its theme on for some reason. The vivo color scheme would override the theme of the app and the app could no longer change it on its own. We didn't find any other examples of this and were curious why vivo thought this was a good idea.

Minor complaints like this aside our experience with Funtouch OS 10 overall was positive. For those who haven't used it in a while, we would suggest trying it out for a while. There's certainly room for improvement but there aren't any serious dealbreakers here and some of the features and customization options might win you over for good.

More features and settings

We reviewed the Indian version, which comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 chipset. Our test sample also had 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage.

In terms of performance, the vivo X50 was above average. A big factor in the phone feeling sprightly most of the time is the 90Hz display, which does make going through basic tasks and applications a breeze. While we can tell the difference between this and something running the Snapdragon 865, on its own the X50 does not feel sluggish. For any non-gamer out there, the performance on offer here would be more than adequate, at least for the foreseeable future.

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  3399
• Realme X50 Pro
  3175
• OnePlus Nord
  1953
• vivo X50 Pro
  1937
• vivo X50
  1827
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro
  1785
• Realme 6 Pro
  1666

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  919
• Realme X50 Pro
  911
• vivo X50 Pro
  636
• OnePlus Nord
  607
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro
  571
• Realme 6 Pro
  565
• vivo X50
  552

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme X50 Pro
  60
• OnePlus Nord
  34
• vivo X50 Pro
  31
• Realme 6 Pro
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro
  26
• vivo X50
  24

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 8
  46
• Realme X50 Pro
  45
• OnePlus Nord
  19
• vivo X50 Pro
  17
• Realme 6 Pro
  16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro
  15
• vivo X50
  14

As for gamers, a Snapdragon 730 with its Adreno 618 GPU is probably not the best investment. But we are talking hardcore mobile gamers here; most people tend to play more casual games and the X50 can handle those quite easily.