When we talk about vivo’s Y-Series, its usually synonymous with affordable and capable, but still just below its V-Series siblings. For its recent release though, the brand seems to be changing things up, and the vivo Y35, at least on paper, looks like it has a lot to say.
Gone are the days when Y-Series phones really looked their price, and I meant that in a good way. The vivo Y35 comes in two colors – Agate Black, and the one we have here, Dawn Gold, which, they say celebrates a laidback and refined lifestyle. Well, I’d have to agree. It looks great, elegant, premium.
vivo Y35: What’s in the Box
You get a more squarish look with less curves, flat sides, and rounded corners. Side fingerprint scanners are becoming a trend, and this one is no different. You even get a headphone jack for enjoying your music the “wired” way. Always a good-to-have.
The camera module offers a good contrasting look to the rest of the rear panel with its glossy black surface, along with some branding. The vivo branding, also contrasts the glittery look, using a glossy finish that also responds nicely to light.
vivo Y35 has a 6.58-inch LCD with Full HD resolution, nicely complimented with a 90Hz refresh rate. As such, you get smooth, snappy, and fluid animations, although colors aren’t as punchy as say an AMOLED display. Still, it’s a decent screen to watch videos on. To add to
With a Snapdragon 680 and 8GB of RAM at the helm, the phone has more than enough muscle for a typical day-to-day load, which, in my case, consists of social media updates, Netflix, YouTube, a bit of photography, and listening to music on Spotify or Apple Music. With RAM extension, it can even add up to 8GB of virtual RAM to improve performance.
You also get 256GB of storage, which personally is a lot, perhaps too much for me, but those who have a lot of files to store, whatever those are, will probably be delighted. You can add more with a microSD card.
We’ll save the benchmarks for the full review, but what I can tell you is that you will be able to game on this phone, and the experience will depend on what you’ll play. Lighter titles like Mobile Legends or Call of Duty Mobile will run without any major issues while more resource heavy games like Genshin Impact will still run, though the experience won’t be as smooth and snappy, and you’ll need to dial down/play with the settings to get better performance.
In the optics department, there’s a 50MP main camera, along with a pair of 2MP sensors – for depth sensing and macro photography. While this is a decent configuration, I prefer an ultra-wide to a macro lens, as I use it more often, I guess it depends on what type of photography you do. For video, it can record up to 1080p at 30fps, which isn’t necessarily bad, but I still wish there was 60 fps.
Quality-wise, it’s decent and more than enough for your usual IG/FB post, good amounts of detail, contrast, and sharpness. The bokeh effect it produces is also convincing.
vivo Y35 packs a 5,000mAh battery, which is a breath of fresh air from the 4,XXXmAh ones found in a lot of other devices today. We’ll save the battery benchmark for the full take, but what we can confirm is that this phone will last you at a day or two with the tasks I mentioned above. It even comes with 44W fast-charging, which means you get minimal downtime between charges.
Our Initial Take
So far, I’m quite happy with my experience with this phone, performance has been great so far, I’m digging the premium look, especially with this Dawn Gold color, and the cameras are decent, though I’m really not sold on not having an ultra-wide camera.
What we like so far
- Premium looking design
- Decent performance
- Great battery life
What we don’t like so far
- No ultra-wide camera
- Notch design
- Room lighting photos seem like a challenge for its cameras
vivo Y35 is now available at the vivo e-store, Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok for PhP14,999. Stay tuned for our full review.
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
