iMars Vivi 8 Review: New Budget King in Market?

There are tons of smartphone out there, especially budget phones. You can go deeper and categorize them as entry-level budget phones or mid-range budget phones. Budget phone market is a huge one and its very challenging for everyone given, there are companies like Xiaomi that give you the best for buck in every category.

So to explore a rare opportunity, iMars Nepal recently launched a phone called iMars vivi 8. We have already done a unboxing and first impression video, if you are interested the link should be right up there. In this video, we will be taking it a step further for a full review of the device.

iMars Vivi 8 Review

So we have the iMars Vivi 8 in gold color option and you will be impressed at a first glance. It looks good and I really like the brushed finish on the back. Even though It’s a old design and finish, it certainly stands out as we’ve been getting a lot of glass like finish recently. The back of this phone might strike you as a metal but it’s actually a plastic. Given, it’s price we do not really need to question the choice of material.

The back slightly blends onto the aluminum frame and the frame itself feels nice and solid. Volume controls and power buttons are on the right side. The buttons feel clicky and are at a natural position where the thumb naturally rests. On the bottom we have a single bottom firing speaker, along with micro usb charging port. Whereas, we have a 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top and a dual sim slot. Actually we can use two sim and a micro sd card at a same time on the Vivi 8.

After seeing the notch design for a whole year, every phone without the notch feels old and outdated. Likewise, we have a plain design with the Vivi 8, it doesn’t have notch or anything like that. We have big bezels all around. Also, there’s a black border around the screen which looks really boring.

On the back, we get a camera and a fingerprint sensor right below the camera. The fingerprint sensor is under the border. Thus we were getting some partial fingerprint error. You will have to be careful when using the fingerprint sensor. You’ll need to make sure that you are clearly touching the surface with whole finger. Else, the detection will be partial. Well

All & all, iMars vivi 8 is a solidly built smartphone. Even though it is priced under 1 thousand rupees, you won’t feel that it’s a cheap smartphone. It has that bulk, smoothness to its build and even though it has plain and simple design, it is a robust phone.

Display

Now moving on to the display. It has a 5.5 inch display with a screen resolution of 1080 x 1794. It’s a Full HD display and this is where I got confused. The most expensive offering from iMars the Vega x7 has only a HD display, but the Vivi 8, which is whole 5 thousand cheaper, has a full HD display. I don’t know what they were thinking!

The display is good for the price tag. The colors are natural, and the colors don’t pop as much but it’s an okayish display for a budget device.

Specs and performance

iMars Vivi 8 is rocking a Spreadtrum SC9853  chipset with 8 core CPU and Mali-T820 GPU. The Spreadtrum SC9853 is not a familiar chipset, I only found one that used this chipset. The GPU however is used on Samsung’s Galaxy A7 (2017) and Galaxy A5(2017).

So as you can see these are old CPU and GPU. This could’ve been a proper mid-range specs back 2 years ago but right now it is kinda outdated.

And, this reflects in its performance as well. Opening apps takes slight time, it is not as fast. Switching between apps is smooth however. Also, I did not have problem while using the app, Instagram was smooth. Likewise messenger, gmail and facebook were also quite smooth. The only problem was launching app for the first time is a little slow.

As for games asphalt 9 ran choppy and you could easily notice dropped frames. Alto’s odyssey ran smoother but it was not the smoothest that I’ve played on some of the budget device with similar price tag.

Camera

Now talking about the camera it has a 13MP camera at the rear and an 8MP camera on the front. I was not expecting the cameras to be good as these are budget devices. And the results were likewise. Some pictures to turn out nice in good conditions. But most of the times it has some problems with handling exposures and color. The pictures turn out dark and lose details. Also, the color look faded in some pictures, almost like out of life.

Now onto the front camera. It’s an okayish front camera. Nothing to brag about, but it does an okay job given it’s a budget device. But It could have been better. And out of curiosity, I compared the selfies between vivi 8 and vega x7. And in some pictures the vivi 8 has more detail of my face than the vega x7. Well, it was interesting.

Software

Now, onto the software side of things. This thing run on android nougat 7.0 and thank god, it a stock UI. It’s a barebone stock ui. It’s nothing fancy, everything is simple and that’s also the reason that wandering around the UI is not a pain. You get your usual google apps preinstalled and two extra apps called call firewall and a shortcut to call history.

Battery

So the Vivi 8 has a 2900 mAh battery and it’s comparatively low but it should be enough if you’re an average user. But you may have to charge it before you reach home. However, for me, I don’t use smartphones as much and I only had to charge the phone when I reached home.

Conclusion

iMars Vivi 8 is nice looking phone and it is well built. Nice thing is it uses stock android and sticks with the basics. But it is not that impressive of a phone when it comes to performance and camera. The front camera is okay but there is room for improvement in terms of rear camera. Bu again it’s a sub 16,000 phone and what was I expecting anyways.