A lot has happened since vivo entered the Philippine market in 2016, with the vivo Y51 as its opening salvo. In between flagship devices, mid-range smartphones, and entry-level offerings, the brand pretty much stuck to how it presented itself since the beginning – a provider of value-for-money smartphones.
 |
| vivo Y33s Review; Modest Upgrade |
Five years later, vivo continues to bring smartphones with uncompromised performance to the budget-savvy market. Among the latest devices under its arsenal is the vivo Y33s, a member of vivo's best-selling Y series. Here's a closer look at this steal-of-a-deal smartphone.
Premium-looking, except for one thing
The vivo Y33s is one of those smartphones that people wouldn't know is budget-friendly unless you deliberately tell them how much they're worth. On the outside, the vivo Y33s looks premium with its flashy design with a lovely rear finish – a definite eye-catcher. Its physique is somehow similar to the vivo X60, a flagship smartphone.
However, the vivo Y33s's predominantly plastic build is a tell-tale of its price point. It feels light and fragile in the hands, and you wouldn't want to use it bare and without a trusty case because its reflective back panel is prone to scratch, smudges, and fingerprints. If you don't mind these caveats as long as what you're holding is a classy-looking device that's worth the price, then the vivo Y33s matches your taste.
In terms of connectivity, the vivo Y33s has everything a typical user will need. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack (which is slowly becoming extinct on smartphones), a USB-C charging port, and a speaker grille on the bottom part of the smartphone.
 |
| Fingerprint Button |
All the physical buttons of the vivo Y33s, namely the volume rockers and the power button-slash fingerprint scanner, are located on its right cheek. The controls are tactile and placed ideally as you'll be able to reach them conveniently, even in one-hand use.
 |
| Retail Package |
Up on top is the vivo Y33s's SIM tray with two slots for nano-SIM cards and one space for the microSD card for up to 1TB of memory expansion.
vivo Y33s Top Features; Enjoy edit-free photos for only Php12,999
Preen screen, a delight for binge-watching
Considering it belongs to the lower mid-range segment, the vivo Y33s has a good display quality. While it doesn't have some of the wow factors like a nice refresh rate or an AMOLED panel, its 6.58-inch Full HD+ IPS screen in 2408 x 1080 resolution is decent enough for a relaxing binge-watching session or an intense gaming round. Plus, you have to note that its screen is IPS, which means that viewing angles are excellent. However, the challenge for the kind of screen that the vivo Y33s has is that it's not ideal to be used outdoors as there's an evident struggle in terms of display visibility.
Screen sharpness and color accuracy, of course, are not that excellent. But hey, the vivo Y33s is better than most of its competitors, which mostly have lackluster 720p displays. Plus, it boasts a 96% NTSC color gamut. To put things into perspective, an average computer monitor displays around 70 to 75 percent of the NTSC color gamut. Since the vivo Y33s has a smaller screen than monitors and a high color gamut percentage, it can produce a broad spectrum of colors.
Higher chance of productivity with its software and performance
vivo's FunTouch OS has always been among the operating systems on the better end. The vivo Y33s ships with the Android 11 with the 11.1 version of vivo's OS, which comes with convenient and customizable options. It looks neat and easy on the eyes, save for bloatware that can be uninstalled and the unnecessary notifications prompted by the said bloatware. It also comes with Dark Mode for night scrolling and Multi-Window, which makes multitasking on the compact screen of the vivo Y33s so much easier.
Inside its flashy body, the vivo Y33s runs on a MediaTek Helio G80 chipset ideal for everyday casual gaming. Using the vivo Y33s for popular mobile games like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Call of Duty Mobile was a decent experience. However, we noticed that the device tends to heat up due to prolonged gaming.
Another good thing about the vivo Y33s in terms of performance is that it never lagged on us when we switched between apps like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Netflix, and loading time for apps and even big files was pretty quick.
Also, the vivo Y33s joins the new breed of smartphones with an extended RAM which uses a portion of the internal storage as memory if needed by the device. The vivo Y33s comes with 8GB of actual RAM plus 4GB extended RAM, and 128GB of onboard storage.
Popular Benchmark Scores:
- Antutu - 208,732
- Geekbench Single-Core - 364
- Geekbench Multi-Core - 1,233
- Geekbench Compute - 1,110
- PC Mark Work Performance 3.0 - 5,990
- PC Mark Work Storage 2.0 - 7,468
- 3D Mark Wild Life - 687
- 3D Mark Wild Life Stress Test - 689
- 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme - 171
- 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test - 175
- 3D Mark Sling Shot - 1,526
- 3D Mark Sling Shot Extreme - 1,326
vivo Y76 5G Review; Gaming Ace, Good Buy
Nifty fifty-megapixel camera, except at night
vivo has been doing a good job in the smartphone camera department, and it has a lot of devices to support this claim under its arsenal. The vivo Y33s is no different except for a few things, but allow us to enumerate the good qualities of its cameras first.
 |
| Retail Package |
The smartphone's 50-megapixel triple camera sits beautifully in a nice-looking camera module. Its 50-megapixel sensor is the primary shooter, while the other two lenses are for depth and macro shooting with 2-megapixels each.
On a bright and sunny day and in well-lit environments, the vivo Y33s shines with its imaging prowess. Photos taken using this device under decent lighting are impressive in terms of color saturation and detail sharpness. Although the images aren't precisely Instagram-ready when captured raw using the vivo Y33s, they're good enough with a few photo editing app enhancements.
Shooting modes include HDR, Portrait, Photo, Video, 50MP Mode, Panorama, Time-Lapse, Slow Motion, Live Photo, Documents, and Expert Mode.
Photos taken using the 50MP Mode are evidently better than pictures snapped using the default camera mode with a nice splash of colors. However, in terms of its macro lens, the vivo Y33s is lackluster. The photos we took had rough background blurs on the edges, but this is expected given its price point. If you're more of a macro photos type of person, opt to get a flagship device that offers a mirrorless camera-like image quality.
Night Mode also isn't a strength of the vivo Y33s. The photos we took at night looked cloudy and muddy, and the colors were washed out.
Selfies taken using the 16-megapixel front camera of the vivo Y33s were also great. The vivo Y33s is unlike the other smartphones in the market that beautify self-portraits almost too much by default to the point that the subject is nearly unrecognizable.
Camera Samples:
 |
| Pool, Day |
 |
| Pool, Night, Normal |
 |
| Pool, Night Mode |
 |
| Snowman, Normal |
 |
| Snowman, Night Mode |
 |
| Indoor, Ramen |
 |
| Selfie |
Hefty battery, all-day use
With 5,000mAh of juice, the vivo Y33s can survive a whole day of hectic smartphone usage. In terms of our standard video loop test with the brightness and volume levels set at 50%, the device blacked out after 20 hours and 23 minutes.
As mentioned, the vivo Y33s has a USB Type-C port with 18W fast charging that allows the smartphone to go from 2% battery life to 100% in around two hours, which isn't fast enough for us.
Final Words:
Is the vivo Y33s worth it for Php12,999? Well, it's a yes from our team. Although it's evident that it's lacking in some areas, its strengths – which cover the essentials of a smartphone – make up for its caveats. If you've been an entry-level user for a long time and looking for just the right smartphone upgrade that won't hurt your pockets, this is the smartphone to put in your shopping bags.
 |
| vivo Y33s Philippines |
The vivo Y33s is available in Middat Dream and Midnight Black on official vivo stores in Lazada and Shopee, and vivo stores and kiosks all around the Philippines.
How much is the Vivo Y33s price in the Philippines?
- The Vivo Y33s price in the Philippines is Php12,999.
- Get yours online via Lazada at https://bit.ly/vivostoreph or Shopee at https://bit.ly/vivoofficialstorephl.
When will be the Vivo Y33s available in the Philippines?
- The Vivo Y33s is now available in the Philippines.
Vivo Y33s Specs Philippines:
- Dual Nano-SIM, dual standby, supports 4G LTE connectivity
- 6.58-inch IPS Halo FullView FHD+ (2408 x 1080) capacitive touchscreen display
- Dimensions: 164.3mm x 76.1mm x 8mm
- Weight: 175 grams
- Funtouch OS 11 based on Android 11
- Octa-core CPU (2x2.0GHz Cortex-A75 + 6x1.8GHz Cortex-A55), ARM Mali-G52 MC2 GPU, Mediatek MT6769V/CU Helio G80 12nm chipset
- 4GB RAM
- 128GB internal storage, expandable up to 256GB via MicroSD card, uses dedicated slot
- 50MP f/1.8 PDAF main + 2MP f/2.4 macro + 2MP f/2.4 depth triple rear cameras with LED flash, 1080p video recording at 30fps
- 16MP f/2.0 front camera, 1080p video recording at 30fps
- Multimedia Player
- FM Radio
- 3.5mm audio jack
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band
- Bluetooth v5.1
- GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS, BDS
- USB Type-C with OTG function
- Sensors: fingerprint (side-mounted), accelerometer, gyroscope, light, proximity
- Battery: 5,000mAh Li-Po, non-removable, supports 18W fast charging
- Colors: Mirror Black, Midday Dream
- Price: Php12,999