Vivo T4R Review: More About Style and Speed Than Precision Photography

Vivo smartphones are generally not for people looking for value-for-money smartphones, at least not until a couple of years ago. Apart from a few models, Vivo has been consistently delivering great smartphones, and with the recent Q2 2025 numbers, Vivo is the number one smartphone for the fourth quarter in a row in India, pushing most popular brands like Xiaomi and Samsung to the table. And remember this doesn’t include online gaming-focused brand iQOO.

We had reviewed plenty of Vivo phones in the past. Apart from excellent cameras and stylish looks, they are not usually bang for your buck, especially if you care about performance. Owing to this and filling this gap, Vivo has introduced the new T series to its lineup, bringing a performance-oriented smartphone. Basically, these are rebranded versions of the iQOO Z series with almost similar pricing.

Recently, Vivo announced the Vivo T4R in India. The base model, which comes with 8GB +128GB, is priced at 19,499/-, and the 8GB + 256GB is priced at 21,499/,- and the 12GB + 256GB is priced at 23,499/-

I have been using this smartphone for more than a week and am pretty impressed with the device, but there are also a few downsides that can be a deal breaker for some of you. In this detailed review, let’s find out who should buy and who should not buy this smartphone.

Vivo T4R Unboxing

Vivo T4R vs the Rest: Specifications Comparison

Vivo T4R Design and Build: Slim, Flashy and Tough

The design is both the USP and the downside of the Vivo T4R. The smartphone comes with just 7.39 mm of thickness, making it one of the slimmest smartphones in this price segment.

In fact, it is even slimmer than the industry average of 8.22 mm thickness at this price segment. Combined with rounded corners and a slim profile, the smartphone feels very lightweight in the hand and is easier to hold for longer without feeling the heaviness in your hands.

But since Vivo used the plastic chassis all over the smartphone, while the slim profile makes the smartphone extremely comfortable to hold, if you have used metal and glass smartphones before, you will instantly notice the plastic feel in your hand.

Using plastic can significantly reduce the weight of the smartphone, and the smartphone weighs about 183 grams, which is again less than the industry average in this price segment.

Many of you use smartphones with cases; you can buy any premium rubber case, or you can use the TPU case provided in the box to reduce that plastic feel while holding in your hand.

The plastic back on this smartphone can be prone to scratches and dents, but I haven’t noticed any in my usage, and it held up pretty well. Because it is made of plastic, the phone also feels slippery in the hand, especially with those smooth, rounded corners.

If you accidentally drop the phone, the Vivo T4R comes with SCHOTT Alpha glass protection. In addition to this, Military-Standard Ruggedness (MIL-STD 810H), which can survive your accidental drops, and for the price, Vivo is also offering a full IP68/IP69 Water and Dust Resistance protection under 20000, which is rare to find in this price segment.

This means you don’t need to worry about the sudden burst of rain when you are outdoors; you can safely use your smartphone. However, you should keep note of the water-resistant limitations when using it.

The rear camera module has a unique design, which Vivo uses on most of its smartphones, including its premium number series.

It comes with a dual camera setup and a unique aura flash design. There is a camera bump because of its large camera module design. However, the phone won’t wobble much when used lying on a flat surface. Overall, apart from the plastic feeling, it is slim and offers decent protection and quad curved screen and just 7.39 mm thickness, which makes the device look both premium and stylish at this price point.

Speaking of the ports and button placements, it comes with a Type-C port on the bottom, volume up and down buttons are placed on the right side, fortunately slightly lower for better reach and also clicky. It comes with stereo speaker support.

It comes with two shiny color variants. I have the Twilight blue variant, which looks fancy. If you want a flashy, shiny back on your phone that grabs attention, this is for you, but if you want minimal-looking colors, there is also another option, and you can choose from iQOO Z10R color variants for even more standard color options.

Another USP of Vivo T4R is its front quad curved display, another rare feature that you can find in smartphones under Rs 20,000 in India. And this is one of the best quad curved designs I have seen so far on a smartphone. I personally love curved screens, but I don’t usually prefer smartphones with huge rounded corners, which have downsides like accidental touches, and also are hard to hold in the hand.

Vivo T4R comes with a quad curved design with only slightly curved edges, and it almost feels like you are using a flat design, which is a good thing. The phone feels both premium and has fewer bezels on all sides, making it the best-looking display on the front. Finally, it comes with a center punch hole camera and an under-display fingerprint sensor.

Vivo T4R Display: Pretty Quad-Curved, Vibrant

Vivo T4R comes with a 6.7-inch full HD+ AMOLED display on the front. And it’s a tall and wide display. Thanks to its quad-curved display, it looks very premium from the front, and it is one of the prettiest displays on smartphones I have used.

Since it is an AMOLED display, the display quality is really good. It offers vivid colors and deep blacks and is very good for consuming content and reading.

The large and tall display, combined with the display quality, makes it a great option for watching movies and reading. Fortunately, you can also adjust the screen colors based on your preference. The default option has a warmer tone, which is my preferred option. You can also set it to professional for standard and bright for a cooler color tone.

And the display supports up to 120Hz refresh rate, you can set it to smart switch, which switches the screen refresh rate from 60Hz to 120Hz depending on what’s on your screen. For media consumption, the smartphone also supports HDR10+ out of the box, and it supports Widevine L1, which means all your Netflix and Amazon Prime content can play in HD.

It can reach up to 1800 nits brightness, and it’s good enough for indoor use and mostly good for outdoor usage. However, you might find it a bit hard to use under bright direct sunlight. In low light, the display brightness also gets lower, which makes it best for viewing content in low light and before bed without strain to your eyes.

Vivo T4R also comes with SGS Eye Protection Certification, which is a standard given to smartphones that emit less blue light and are safer for your eyes, especially for long-term mobile usage.

Overall, Vivo T4R has nailed the display offering by giving a quad curved and AMOLED display, and it can get decently bright outdoors and very low during nights and handy eye protection to protect your eyes, and a tall, wide display makes content watching and viewing experience better.

Vivo T4R Performance: Smooth for Daily Use, but Not Built for Gamers

Vivo T4R is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 processor coupled with 8/12 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128 GB/256 GB of UFS 2.1 storage.

The Dimensity 7400 features an octa-core CPU (4x Cortex-A78 at 2.6GHz + 4x Cortex-A55 at 2.0GHz). Just like any other midrange processor, it is snappier for everyday tasks and also decently handles multitasking better.

And also, the gaming experience is smooth, but not if you are looking for gaming with high graphics settings. Thanks to the 12GB of RAM, everyday tasks and games felt smoother and snappier without any major performance issues. The base variant also comes with 8GB of RAM, which should be no issue for everyday use and moderate gaming.

It supports BGMI HD and up to 60FPS.  I played BGMI and Infinite Flight Simulator on this smartphone for an hour. It handled both games without any issues. But don’t expect a high-level gaming experience; it offers good gaming performance for the price.

The phone gets slightly warmer when put under heavy performance pressure, like heavy gaming and extensive video recordings.

Thanks to its plastic design, you won’t notice much of the heat while holding the smartphone, and I haven’t noticed any thermal issues while using the smartphone in day-to-day use. Thermals are under control for even heavy tasks. Here are the performance throttling tests I have run, and here are the results.

And the UFS 2.2 does a fairly good job, but not the best compared to the industry average at this price point. So installing apps and moving files feels slower.

Vivo T4R Cameras: Great Selfies, Decent Rear Shots, but Dynamic Range Could Be Better

Since it is a Vivo smartphone, you can expect good camera quality, and the Vivo T4R delivers that, but not up to expectations. It comes with a 50MP Sony IMX882 Main Sensor with OIS support + a 2MP depth sensor, which isn’t as useful, of course. And on the front, it comes with a 32 MP. Here are some of the samples that I shot using the Vivo T4R and a comparison with the OnePlus Nord CE 5, just for reference.

The first picture was shot in bright daylight, where there is plenty of light for the camera to capture, but at the same time, it is also challenging for the camera to maintain an accurate dynamic range.

From the samples, the dynamic range is decent, but there are slightly blown-out areas in the top right and underexposed areas, such as under the trees. It also offers decent details, but not the best when compared to the OnePlus Nord CE 5, and overall, the picture looks oversaturated, which brings an unnatural look. Vivo T4R holds up fairly well for its price, but the OnePlus Nord CE 5 leads in the daylight sample, and remember, there is more than Rs 7- 8k price difference between the smartphones. So we are not directly comparing cameras. The standalone pictures look decent for the price.

Here is another bright daylight sample shot on the Vivo T4R and OnePlus Nord CE 5. Vivo T4R continues to struggle with exposure and maintaining poor dynamic range. The brighter areas are slightly overexposed, while the shadows are underexposed. On the other hand, OnePlus Nord CE 5 offers a more balanced image with highlights under control, visible shadows, and areas under the trees and retains decent details, which is missing on the Vivo T4R samples. And it is the same case with the saturation, Vivo T4R pops the colors, making the colors look more punchy overall, giving it a boosted look. Don’t get me wrong, Vivo T4R camera samples are still usable and social media worthy right away, but if you want more realistic and balanced photos, this is not for you.

Next is the 2x shot in broad daylight from both cameras. Neither smartphones come with a dedicated telephoto lens and uses optical zoom. The images were shot using the default 2x options on both smartphones. Both smartphones did a pretty good job here, while the Vivo T4R has slightly more saturated colors, especially in the greens and on the other hand, the OnePlus Nord CE 5 image is more natural. Both images capture decent details. Unlike the above images, there are no issues with over-sharpening the images, and it also has a good dynamic range.

This is the most challenging scene for both the camera and both smartphones handle it differently for this scene. First, Vivo T4R brightens the face while blowing out the highlights around the sun, and my face looks softer even when the beautification is turned off. But overall, it does a pretty good job, which is again slightly boosted and social media-ready.

The OnePlus Nord CE 5 avoids overexposing the scene, and because of this, my face slightly looks underexposed, and skin tones look more natural close to real-life. Also, OnePlus Nord CE 5 retains better details and has less flare effect compared to the Vivo, and it handles the dynamic range well.

In the low light, both Vivo T4R and the OnePlus Nord CE 5produce similar results. Unlike daylight, Vivo T4R struggles with dynamic range. The low-light images are close to natural colors, but slightly boosted colors. The details in the image are also mostly the same; however, due to the default more ISO selection, the Vivo T4R image seems to have slightly more noise than the OnePlus Nord CE 5 image.

On the video, both the front and back cameras support 4K 60 FPS, which is rare at this price. The back camera captures good video quality in the daylight with decent details, stabilization, and punchy colors, but the front camera, without OIS, struggles to produce stable videos. Even shifting to the HD quality, the footage is very shaky, which is something Vivo should work on the EIS for better and more stable footage.

Vivo T4R Front camera samples

Vivo T4 Rear camera samples

Overall, in the bright, challenging scenes, Vivo T4R tends to lose completely on dynamic range, producing an unnatural-looking image. But in other cases, like portraits, 2x shots and selfie camera and in low light, the overall image looks decent for the price, except for the slightly more punchy colors, which most people like. The front is very good at producing a detailed image without over-sharpening and close to natural colors.

Vivo T4R Battery Life and Charging: All-Day Power With Slow Charging

The Vivo T4R features a 5,700mAh battery. A battery close to 6000mAh can keep the phone juiced up the entire day if you are a moderate to heavy user. On average, you can get around 5-6 hours of screen time on moderate use, and if you’re a light user, you can expect a full working day.

It supports 44W fast charging, it takes about 1 hour and 30 to 40 minutes to fully charge your smartphone from 0-100 percent, which isn’t the fastest you can find, but close to the average at this price point. If fast charging is your highest priority, there are smartphones under 20000 that offer 67W and even 80W, which can charge your smartphone in under an hour. And if you are okay with charging your smartphone overnight, this is a great option since lower charging speeds can also contribute to better battery health in the long run. It comes with the Type-C port at the bottom, and both charger and cable are offered in the box.

Vivo T4R Software Experience: Customizable, but Cluttered With Bloat

Software is one of the biggest downsides of the Vivo smartphone, whether it is a 150k smartphone like the X Fold 5 or even the budget smartphones like the Vivo T4R.

The overall animations feel slow and laggy; despite the smartphone supporting the 120Hz refresh rate, you won’t feel that snappier performance while using it. To get a slightly better experience, I would recommend you enable developer options and set window animations to turn off or 0.5 for slightly better performance.

And while setting up the device, like any other smartphone on a budget, Vivo’s Funtouch OS 15 uses dark patterns designed to serve ads and unwanted notifications. Even if you disabled some of those settings while setting up your smartphone for the first time, the Vivo Apps Store app constantly pushes unwanted notifications. Not just the Vivo smartphones, this is an issue in most of the budget smartphones.

Every time you unlock a smartphone and there is at least one push notification from the Vivo app store. And it also comes with bloatware and unwanted games.

As per the update cycle, Vivo T4R will receive two major Android versions. It comes with Android 15 (Android 15 Funtouch OS 15) out of the box, so you can get up to Android 17. Vivo guarantees three years of regular security updates.

And if you love customization, Vivo’s Funtouch OS15 offers plenty of customization features including icons, widgets and themes and also useful features like bypass charging which directly powers your smartphone instead of charging your battery while gaming which can reduce the heat and also increase the battery lifespan and the built-in recorder doesn’t announce call recording alerts while you are recording the call.

Overall, the software experience is not that great on this smartphone, especially if you are coming from a high-end OnePlus smartphone or even Realme phones with ColorOS. The overall experience feels slightly sluggish, but since it is a budget smartphone, most of the smartphones at this price range offer a very similar experience. Vivo should definitely improve its OS experience.

Vivo T4R Extras: Skips IR and NFC

The smartphone is fully 5G compatible, it supports a wide array of 5G bands including n1, n3, n5, n8, n28, n40, n77, and n78 (SA/NSA), and it is dual SIM 5G compatible.

It supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 and is also Bluetooth 5.4 compatible. I haven’t faced any network issues or call drops while using this device. And the Wi-Fi speed is also on par with the other smartphones in this price range. For comparison, here is the network signal and Wi-Fi speed comparison on the OnePlus Nord CE 5 and the Vivo T4R from a Wi-Fi router in the other room.

However, it doesn’t support NFC and also doesn’t have an IR blaster, so you miss out on the convenience of tap and pay, and also controlling your home appliances like AC directly from your smartphone.

Vivo T4R Sound: Stereo Speakers, but Not the Loudest

Vivo does include stereo speakers on this smartphone, a feature that has been ignored by Vivo for most of the time. You get a proper stereo speaker setup on this smartphone, the sound quality is good and loud enough for most indoor environments, but it’s not loud enough in noisy environments. The stereo separation is decent. And it is decent for watching movies and gaming indoors, but lacks volume in a noisy environment. The call quality is decently loud in most cases.

Vivo T4R Review Verdict

Similar to most Vivo phones Vivo T4R outshines in three core areas. The slim form factor and flashy design and beautiful looking quad curved OLED display brings stylish looks to the phone, The MediaTek Dimensity 7400 ensures you get smooth everyday performance and decent gaming and the 4K 60 FPS video recordings on the rear with OIS ensures you capture good daylight videos and the front camera does a really good job capturing the details and maintaining the natural colors. The IP rating, military grade certification, a few useful software features, and a day battery ensure the smartphone checks all the boxes, making it a close to all-rounder smartphone under Rs 2,000 in India.

But not everything about the smartphone is pleasing, the poor software experience with unwanted notifications and pre-installed bloatware, which can lead to an annoying and frustrating experience, and this isn’t only the case with this phone, a lot of budget smartphones come with preloaded apps which users didn’t ask for and push constant notifications. Fortunately, with the right setup process and uninstalling the bloatware and muting notifications, you can avoid unnecessary pop-ups and distractions, but unfortunately, not everyone is aware of these settings and continues to face interrupted notifications.

The gaming performance is decent, and this smartphone isn’t for true gamers who want top-notch gaming performance. If you want a smartphone specifically for gaming, there are better options out there.

Overall, Vivo T4R is a great smartphone for someone who wants a slim and lightweight, stylish-looking smartphone with all-day battery, a great selfie camera, a decent camera for social media-worthy posts, smooth day-to-day performance and occasional gaming when you feel bored. But if you want faster charging or want a clean software experience, this smartphone is not for you.

Buy Vivo T4R