We continue our journey with the vivo Y22s sharing our full review of the phone as we’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now.
With its campaign slogan titled Max out the Night, we tried the phone’s sensor a 50MP Super Night Camera to capture images under low light conditions. You’ll see some sample photos we took as you read along our review.
The vivo Y22s is priced at PHP10,999 for the 4GB+128GB model and the 8GB+128GB variant at PHP12,999.
The vivo Y22s is now available on vivo’s online stores and offline stores starting November 5 onwards. You can also purchase the vivo Y22s on its vivo e-store, official e-commerce stores on Shopee and Tiktok Shop and all vivo concept stores and kiosks nationwide.
So, let’s start off by sharing with you the full specifications of the vivo Y22s.
Full Specifications
- Price: PHP10,999 (4GB+128GB) / PHP12,999 (8GB+128GB)
- Colors: Starlit Blue, Summer Cyan
- Weight: 192 grams
- Dimensions: 164.3×76.1×8.38mm
- Display: 6.55-inch HD+
- Resolution: 1612×720 pixels
- Panel Type: LCD
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 2.4GHz
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 128GB (expandable up to 1TB)
- Rear Camera: 50MP f/1.8+2MP f/2.4 with LED Flash
- Front Camera: 8MP f/2.0
- Battery: 5000mAh
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 2.4GHz/5GHz, Bluetooth 5.0, USB Type-C, GPS, OTG, FM
- Network: 2G, 3G, 4G, 4G LTE
- Card Slot: 2 Nano SIMs + 1 Micro SD
- Sensors: Accelerometer, Ambient Light, Proximity Sensor, E-compass, Virtual Gyroscope
- Biometrics: Fingerprint Scanner and Face Unlock
- Location: GPS, Beidou, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS
- OS: Funtouch OS12 based on Android 12
- In The Box: Y22s Unit, USB Cable, Power Adapter, SIM Ejector, Protective Case, Screen Protector (Pre-Applied) and Documentations
Design and Build Quality
The vivo Y22s offers two stylish colorways in Starlit Blue and our review unit that we truly liked that comes in Summer Cyan color.
What we loved about the Summer Cyan is the very nice and appealing with its flowing pattern that overlaps just like a peacock showing its attractive feathers. It’s so unique! vivo achieved this kind of textured effect by using a nanoscale gradient electroplating process.
Shifting the phone sideways the color gradually changes between hues of blue to yellow or even some green can be reflected on the back panel. You can see here from our photos how cool the transition is once you tilt it.
The back cover is made of a durable polycarbonate material covered with a frosted anti-glare (AG) surface which adds protection against dust, scratches and hides fingerprint marks.
The square type camera module is made of glossy plastic material with rounded corners that houses a large dual-camera setup and LED flash. A vivo logo is placed at the bottom.
It weighs 192 grams which makes the phone feels slightly heavy but it’s ergonomic design makes it easy to hold thanks to its 2.5D curvature body with a flat frame and similar rounded corners on the front and back.
You have the SIM tray and a microphone on the top while speaker grille, USB-C port, microphone and a headphone jack at the bottom. On the right the volume rockers and fingerprint scanner embedded with a rear power/sleep button is flushed to the side. They are easy to reach so you won’t feel much issues pressing it.
The front has slightly thick bezels found on the top and sides the bottom bezels on the other hand are a bit raised. The front camera gets a dew-drop notch design and the receiver just above it.
Display
The vivo Y22s sports a 6.55-inch HD+ Halo FullView capacitive touchscreen display with 1612×720 pixels resolution and 270 PPI density. The type of display used on the Y22s comes with LCD panel, so far we like how vivid, bright and sharp the screen. The viewing angels seems to be notable for playing your online games and watching movies.
At peak brightness of 530 nits the display of the Y22s will have some slight struggle viewing when used during outdoors especially on direct sunlight. At Indoors the phone will have no problem as it’s bright enough to work well.
The phone has a maximum screen refresh rate of 90Hz and the standard 60Hz for a less power consumption. With the 90Hz refresh rate it largely enhances your screen experience as scrolling through the apps, images and browsing websites becomes so much smoother. Gameplay experience on the Y22s becomes sleeker.
It has HDR10 playback certification enabling you to watch HDR content on supported apps such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube.
You get eye care protection against harmful blue light discharge with all those long hours of usage. Enabling the eye care display turned on will have warmer colors on the screen and you can even schedule it or adjust the intensity.
Hardware
Under the hood the vivo Y22s comes with an 6nm octa-core processor which is paired along with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 with clock speeds of up to 2.4GHz. You also get a hefty 128GB of onboard internal storage with dedicated Micro SD card slot for additional storage expansion up to 1TB. For its internal memory you have an 8GB of RAM plus an extra 8GB Dynamic RAM which brings up a massive total of 16GB of Dynamic RAM.
With all these powerful internal specs on the vivo Y22s it was able to perform heavy multi-task without any issues particularly when we used the phone to cover our onsite events. We were able take photos, record videos, update our social media and browse the internet to research about a particular product or company. Thanks to the 16GB Dynamic RAM together with the Snapdragon 680 chipset it was able to run multiple applications and we encountered no lags as we took photos then upload our posts on our social media platforms during the long event which lasted around 2-3 hours. For us this is quite impressive.
The vivo Y22s is well capable for playing low to medium graphic games without any frame drops. We had a good time playing with Call of Duty, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG and Subway Surfers. There were few encounters of frame drops when we set the games of PUBG and COD on its highest graphic settings.
Making calls on the device are stable with the sound so clear and crisp on its earpiece.
As for the sound quality, the audio of the phone is decent and mostly coming out from its bottom-firing speakers. We would suggest setting up the volume midway for a much comfortable listening experience.
We did some few benchmarks on the phone using Geekbench 5, the phone system’s performance scored 377 in single-core and 1550 in multi-core. Storage benchmark test using CPDT Benchmark app gave us scores with 415.97MB/s on sequential write (4MB) and 445.53MB/s on sequential read (4MB).
Camera
Talking about the camera, the vivo Y22s is equipped with a dual camera setup at the back which consists of a 50MP main sensor having f/1.8 aperture while the secondary camera comes with 2MP macro lens with an aperture of f/2.4. The 2MP macro camera can capture those small objects such as flowers or insects. It also holds a LED flash for those who want to shoot low-light videos or add illumination when you take photos during the night.
On the front side, it has an 8MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture for your selfies.
On the camera app, you are greeted with four shooting modes commonly used that are ready at your dispersal with Night, Portrait, Photo and Video. Then you have another eight more shooting modes with 50MP, Pano, Live Photo, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse, Pro, Documents and Double Exposure.
The rear camera works very well during day light conditions as images are clear, a lesser amount of noise, very well saturated and you get natural color that pops up nicely. You can have good decent photos taken indoors if the ambient lighting is very bright.
Now during low light conditions or even at night the Y22’s 50MP SuperNight camera can offer some pretty and decent good looking photos with the exposure and quality just upright. So far we tried it and we were quite amazed how the colors are all good and still acceptably sharp that’s capable of capturing night images with very little natural lighting.
But there were some images when we zoomed in were a bit soft so just take as many pictures as you can and you’ll find that social media worthy photo to post with. I hope that vivo may resolve the issue thru future updates to the phone.
As for selfies, the Y22s won’t disappoint you it will look good also during bright conditions. Meanwhile, selfies that are taken in low light situations were decent and usable for sharing or posting it online.
Here are some sample photos we captured using the vivo Y22s.
1x Night mode, Outdoor
1x Night mode, Outdoor
Selfie, Photo mode, Outdoor
1x, Photo mode, Outdoor, Low Light
1x, Night mode, Outdoor using GreenOrange night filter
Super-Macro On, Indoor, Low Light
1x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
Selfie, Indoor, Bright Ambient Light
1x Photo mode, Outdoor, Cloudy Weather
2x Photo mode, Outdoor, Cloudy Weather
10x Photo mode, Outdoor, Cloudy Weather
1x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
You can choose to record your videos at resolutions either in 720p or 1080p with available frame rates between 30fps and 60fps. However, if you shoot at 1080p the frame rate is automatically set to 30fps unlike the 720p you can pick either the 30fps or 60fps. For the front camera, you have both video resolutions at 720p and 1080p at 30fps only.
In general, we were pleased with the cameras performance of the vivo Y22s considering the price point on it.
Mobile Gaming Features
For mobile gamers, the vivo Y22s has built-in game features with Ultra Game mode and Multi-Turbo 5.5 that can improve your gaming experience letting you enjoy a smooth and uninterrupted game plays.
Multi-Turbo 5.0 automatically activates every time you start the game is a series of boosters to optimize the CPU, RAM, GPU, touch, thermal management policy enabled and network connection to reduce stutters and lags in games.
Ultra Game mode exposes the game sidebar when swipe sideways from the top left corner. It brings out some shortcut functions to further enhance your gaming performance. It has 4D game vibration, voice changer, enables background calls while supporting hands-free and hides floating notification alerts to avoid any interruption during gameplay. You can also select your preferred game type mode either in battery saver mode, balanced mode or performance mode.
In the Ultra Game mode settings, when you plug your headphones or earbuds, you can activate the ear-customized audio effect to select the sound profile you want based on your hearing capability. You can hear a sample of each profile and customize your own sound effects. Sound is crucial for gamers so this feature comes in handy that can create a sense of immersion and develop better game engagement.
The Ultra Game mode is very convenient as I can play without no interruption from calls and mute notifications coming in to the phone. There’s also a record screen option if I liked to review how I played the game or use it to make a content for my YouTube or Facebook reels.
So far all popular games like Call of Duty Mobile, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and PUBG ran without any flaws or lags on the Y22s. For games that are not too graphically demanding such as Subway Surfer, Candy Crush and the likes you’ll definitely have no problem at all.
What I noticed during playing for almost an hour the phone gets slightly warm on the back. Well this is not too much of a problem unlike other phones we’ve tested are far more warmer as I felt it on both of my fingers on the back.
Software
The user interface on the vivo Y22s is very much simple and easy to use running on Funtouch OS 12 which is based on Android 12.
The phone comes with a few pre-installed apps like Agoda, Facebook, foodpanda, GCash, Lazada, Shopee, Spotify, and TikTok. Some of these pre-installed apps are the ones I usually use but If you don’t like it you can easily uninstall them from the app settings.
It also has some Google tools and vivo’s very own proprietary apps.
The Funtouch OS 12 offers tons of customization options to personalize the way you want it. You can customize the wallpaper, UI colors, themes or adjust the size of the icons or its shape.
Under the Dynamic Effects settings, you may also modify the animation style of the fingerprint, facial recognition, home screen unlock, charging and the USB insertion.
Connectivity, Sensors and Biometrics
You have an array of connectivity options on the vivo Y22s like Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, hotspot, Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE, and USB Type-C port.
For biometrics you have the side-mounted Fingerprint scanner and face unlock or Face Wake to put an extra layer of security on it. Both the side-mounted fingerprint and face unlock on this phone performs very well. It just takes a flash of a second to unlock the vivo Y22S.
Sensors on the device is equipped with accelerometer, proximity and compass.
The SIM tray can hold 2 nano SIM cards and Micro SD
Battery
The vivo Y22s is equipped with a 5000 mAh battery that supports an 18W Fast Charge feature while using a USB-C cable to quickly juice up the phone in no time.
With a bigger battery capacity, the phone can offer you the ability to work much more efficiently, play games, listen to hours of music and even browse or stream your favorite videos longer without thinking of battery consumption as the battery of the Y22s got your back.
Vivo claims that the 5000 mAh battery can give you 9.4 hours playtime on graphic-intensive games, 21.5 hours of watching online HD movies and longer standby time on the device.
Charging the phone in just 15-minutes gave the battery an initial 14 percent charge then after 30-minutes it went up to 38 percent. It took us almost 2 hours and 16 minutes to fully charge the battery of the Y22s from 0 to 100 percent.
Thru the OTG function, the vivo Y22s supports reverse charging that allows you to use the huge battery of the phone to charge other devices like smartphones, smart watch, charging case of the earbuds etc. using any USB cable.
It also has a battery saver option found under the settings to extend the battery life of the phone but doing this will have the phone’s Dark theme mode on, limits or turn off background activity and some network connections adjustments.
What We Like
- Frosted AG Surface Panel
- Colorways
- 90Hz Refresh Rate
- Large Display
- 16GB Dynamic RAM
- Expandable Storage Up To 1TB
- 50MP Main Camera
- Night Mode
- 5000mAh Battery
- Reverse Charging
- Ultra Game Mode and Multi-Turbo
- Waterproof and Dustproof
- Price
What We Want
- Triple Camera Setup
- Ultra-wide Camera
- Cooling Technology
Conclusion
After a few weeks with the vivo Y22s I’m still convinced it’s a pretty decent phone with a set of good features and an attractive price point.
Again, as I’ve said during our first impression article on the Y22s I adore the colorway we got in Summer Cyan and how uniquely appealing the textured back panel is.
Internal spec-wise you have a Snapdragon 680 octa-core processor, a huge 128GB storage that’s expandable up to 1TB via MicroSD, and a bigger 16GB Dynamic RAM. Making sure that you’ll have a snappier performance when switching between applications as well as running graphically heavy games without lags. Plus, longer usage on the phone thanks to the 5000mAh battery coupled with an 18W Fast Charge.
The 50MP main camera has upright performance capturing photos especially during bright conditions and at night producing decent images. Although, it would be nice if it had an ultra-wide camera but for now the main camera alone can do just fine. However, if you need to capture a much wider field of view you can invest on an ultra-wide camera clip-on that are mostly available at online e-commerce stores.
So, if you are not too keen on the specs and are looking for an entry-level phone then we would definitely suggest to try the vivo Y22s.
