General I have an X90 Pro+ in the UK - AMA

[mbfamily]

I average maybe 10GB of 4G data per day.

That is insane. My contract gives me 12GB per month. I'm not surprised you're experiencing "bad" battery life with this amount of data usage.
Maybe buy a 4G/5G router for your home?

 

[extremecarver]

Well then I would need to pay twice the money each month for internet while being in Taiwan. Before I would do that I would upgrade to 5G contract but they cost twice as much for truly unlimited (2-3 TB / month seems acceptable use from what I hear on unlimited contracts in Taiwan before they kick you out)..

I usually get 50-60mbit on 4G, and 5G would give me 120-180mbit where I live (tested that). You seem to live in Germany or some other country where they rip people off when it comes to phone contracts.. Taiwan and China no one uses WiFi anymore it seems to me. Too inconvenient when you have great 4G/5G coverage and actually pretty poor speeds on cable/ADSL and fibre isn't available that well.

I also just ran the same test on my P30 Pro and it seems to consume only half the energy! The battery is 4200, but Nearly 3 years old and at estimated 3400mah left. Vs 4700 on the X90.. it needed 3% so that's less than half of the X90 pro plus. Actually it only downloaded 1.8GB instead of 2.2GB in those 19 minutes.. but that doesn't really change much...

Vivo has to fix the modem firmware, or have they built in some cheap Chinese stuff to save money? Can buy the 8gen2 also without modem (see Huawei who isn't allowed to get the 5G modems).
According to Qualcomm the 4G modem should be at least twice as efficient vs 4 years ago - so something is clearly wrong here and that explains why the X90 pro+ for so many people has poor battery life (considering this is a 8gen2 device!l and some don't even get 3-4 hours of SOT per day before they run out of juice.

Now this is on the trial update which definitely improved things!

So that's the culprit and I'm sure I'm not alone. The reason for the super poor battery life is that here everyone uses 4G and 5G instead of wifi. Something's broken here. On 5G it's even worse as I can gather in bilibili videos. And yeah surely those complaining also have quite a lot of data use. But other phones do much better.


And to keep it to the words of others here, this is a China only device so it should work according to China usage. And yeah that means massive 4K streaming on Mobile data every day because 5G was the death of stationary internet...


Another thing, I think in Europe you have fallback to 2G for calls and maybe initiation? Here it's mainly standalone 4G/5G because most providers stopped the 2G/3G network, only exists in rural areas as backup but I think will be switched off soon too and frequencies used for 5G. That could mean a big difference in battery life too with a modem that clearly malfunctions on 4G and 5G data use.
I right now have like 50 towers on all networks that are reachable, 2 are 3G one is 2G the rest is 4G and 5G from my apartment. It's piss poor if your phone then drains battery like crazy on 4G and 5G and you belong to the majority without WiFi at home...

That is I actually can use WiFi of a neighbor who's a friend but it's slower than my 4G speed. So I prefer using 4G. That WiFi is just a 4G router from a slower provider. but that is how for 2 days I tried using WiFi only.

 

[P6P]

Well then I would need to pay twice the money each month for internet while being in Taiwan. Before I would do that I would upgrade to 5G contract but they cost twice as much for truly unlimited (2-3 TB / month seems acceptable use from what I hear on unlimited contracts in Taiwan before they kick you out)..

I usually get 50-60mbit on 4G, and 5G would give me 120-180mbit where I live (tested that). You seem to live in Germany or some other country where they rip people off when it comes to phone contracts.. Taiwan and China no one uses WiFi anymore it seems to me. Too inconvenient when you have great 4G/5G coverage and actually pretty poor speeds on cable/ADSL and fibre isn't available that well.

I also just ran the same test on my P30 Pro and it seems to consume only half the energy! The battery is 4200, but Nearly 3 years old and at estimated 3400mah left. Vs 4700 on the X90.. it needed 3% so that's less than half of the X90 pro plus. Actually it only downloaded 1.8GB instead of 2.2GB in those 19 minutes.. but that doesn't really change much...

Vivo has to fix the modem firmware, or have they built in some cheap Chinese stuff to save money? Can buy the 8gen2 also without modem (see Huawei who isn't allowed to get the 5G modems).
According to Qualcomm the 4G modem should be at least twice as efficient vs 4 years ago - so something is clearly wrong here and that explains why the X90 pro+ for so many people has poor battery life (considering this is a 8gen2 device!l and some don't even get 3-4 hours of SOT per day before they run out of juice.

Now this is on the trial update which definitely improved things!

So that's the culprit and I'm sure I'm not alone. The reason for the super poor battery life is that here everyone uses 4G and 5G instead of wifi. Something's broken here. On 5G it's even worse as I can gather in bilibili videos. And yeah surely those complaining also have quite a lot of data use. But other phones do much better.


And to keep it to the words of others here, this is a China only device so it should work according to China usage. And yeah that means massive 4K streaming on Mobile data every day because 5G was the death of stationary internet...

Could you stop that mimimi pls? I guess you have reached now everyone with your comments and i think that's annoying for everyone too.
Also it won't make your phone better nor help someone else what this forum is usually used for. I haven't seen anyone here agreeing with you so you have probably a corrupted device and your Taiwan network sucks which explains that high battery drain. 120mbits is crap. With 5g i have over 500. Even with 4g my speed is about 300.

The modem is fine and the overall phone is fine except for you. There is nothing to fix!

I'm out of this nonsense discussion...

 

[extremecarver]

Well speeds on unlimited data are usually always slower, and that's after burst and not from a maybe preferred Speedtest server. Most mobile providers do traffic shaping and slow you down after a minute or so when doing large downloads.

I changed network mode from smart control to balance control and ran the test again, this time 4% so balance seems to safe a bit of juice (those descriptions are ambiguous, I mean to me I don't understand what's saving power when reading the description or title)

Seems balance is the smarter choice? Actually download now was much faster too, 4.8GB in 20 minutes but this could be more related to the network congestion and pure chance? I was connected to the same tower. Oh yeah it's clear we don't have x70 modem, because Qualcomm x70 supports dual simultaneous 5G data with dual sim but have to choose a Sim for data in the menu and not possible to choose both (or they forgot to implement that setting? But power draw clearly hints at this in no way is a x70 modem).

 

[PILLS2389]

We talked last week about the price of the Vivo compared to S23Ultra. In my country you can preorder for a few days the S23Ultra 512GB version for 1320E, after that it will be 1650E. I paid 1070E for my Vivo 512GB version.

From the few review's I saw, they did what GoPro does every year, they increased the FPS, the resolution and a few other small things, they didn't really impproved that much the S22 Ultra.
Now we have to wait for the camera tests comparisons.

 

[Thanos88]

S23 ultra is a money grab. No real significant upgrade from the s22 ultra.

Anyway, loving this vivo. Once debloat is done, it's a pleasure to use. The camera is still my favourite. Screen is gorgeous. Charging speed is brilliant. Battery life itself is amazing for me

 

[vendetta17]

S23 ultra is a money grab. No real significant upgrade from the s22 ultra.

Anyway, loving this vivo. Once debloat is done, it's a pleasure to use. The camera is still my favourite. Screen is gorgeous. Charging speed is brilliant. Battery life itself is amazing for me

extremecarver reply contradicting what you said incoming . Brace yourselves .

 

[Thanos88]

extremecarver reply contradicting what you said incoming . Brace yourselves .

Turns out Vivo customer service is brilliant. I emailed them yesterday, got a reply in less than 24 hours in which they said the next system upgrade will fix the notification issue. Happy days

 

[P6P]

Turns out Vivo customer service is brilliant. I emailed them yesterday, got a reply in less than 24 hours in which they said the next system upgrade will fix the notification issue. Happy days

Let's hope it's not just blablabla to stop the conversation with you.

 

[Vinzie]

Turns out Vivo customer service is brilliant. I emailed them yesterday, got a reply in less than 24 hours in which they said the next system upgrade will fix the notification issue. Happy days

Good to hear... will this be the 13.0.18.3 version which can out in trial ?

 

[Thanos88]

Let's hope it's not just blablabla to stop the conversation with you.

To be fair they replied very quickly, sent me very long replies & showed great professionalism. Time to wait & see

 

[Thanos88]

Good to hear... will this be the 13.0.18.3 version which can out in trial ?

I've attached a screenshot of the email. The "question 1" was with regard to my first question which was about notifications. They haven't given a build number or anything specific but they said the very next update will address the notifications. In my reply I asked them about a ETA time, so waiting to hear back atm

 

[Vinzie]

I've attached a screenshot of the email. The "question 1" was with regard to my first question which was about notifications. They haven't given a build number or anything specific but they said the very next update will address the notifications. In my reply I asked them about a ETA time, so waiting to hear back atm

The first few lines with a lot of 'sorry's' are also present in every mail I got from them.. ^_^

I also asked for an ETA...:

 

[P6P]

I've attached a screenshot of the email. The "question 1" was with regard to my first question which was about notifications. They haven't given a build number or anything specific but they said the very next update will address the notifications. In my reply I asked them about a ETA time, so waiting to hear back atm

Looks great

 

[Vinzie]

Last few updates, came about 3 weeks after previous update:
01-12-22 PD2227C_A_13.0.14.1.W10.V000L1
22-12-22 PD2227C_A_13.0.17.1.W10.V000L1
09-01-23 PD2227C_A_13.0.18.2.W10.V000L1 (This was my first update, I got it 11 january)

And since it is 3 weeks since last update... I was kind of expecting the update to be released today...

 

[Thanos88]

The first few lines with a lot of 'sorry's' are also present in every mail I got from them.. ^_^

I also asked for an ETA...:

View attachment 5826109

Maybe they're genuinely sorry
Let's wait and see. A quick and detailed reply is always a good start

Last few updates, came about 3 weeks after previous update:
01-12-22 PD2227C_A_13.0.14.1.W10.V000L1
22-12-22 PD2227C_A_13.0.17.1.W10.V000L1
09-01-23 PD2227C_A_13.0.18.2.W10.V000L1 (This was my first update, I got it 11 january)

And since it is 3 weeks since last update... I was kind of expecting the update to be released today...

Maybe they were planning to release but got more feedback from users regarding other issues, so they want to do a proper update that fixes all bugs

 

[Vinzie]

Maybe they're genuinely sorry
Let's wait and see. A quick and detailed reply is always a good start

Maybe they were planning to release but got more feedback from users regarding other issues, so they want to do a proper update that fixes all bugs

So it is your fault I dont get an update today....?

 

[Thanos88]

So it is your fault I dont get an update today....?

I only meant well. I was thinking about everyone, not just me. Remember, there's no "I" in team

 

[extremecarver]

The last 2 weeks was Chinese new year so no updates to be expected, since this week everyone is back to work again (last week many were still off).

The trial upgrade has a bug in the camera, sometimes when you get close to the sun it will overexpose so much that your screen turns white. Solve it by leaving the camera and going back in. Happened to me 3 times today around 90-60minutes before sunset trying to shoot portrait partly against the sun.

In general exposure was really a gamble. 1/3 of all shots (maybe 150) were really badly exposed. Colors have to check on PC. On Smartphone display they looked fine. But in general (same as in dxomark review), faces are underexposed when Shooting against the sunset. Vivo's HDR should be able to do it but couldn't. After some time I gave up on the camera and went gcam only, problem with gcam is that we have no proper colour profile and colours are a bit all over the table, but exposure is spot on, HDR enhanced works perfectly, and sharpness is anyhow unrivalled.
So yeah great shots today, but all of them will need editing because out of the box they are lacking. As you simply cannot fix exposure well in the post, I switched to gcam.

If vivo can fix the HDR problems in Shooting against light sources on faces, and fix exposure in general against light sources and fix colours at night - it only needs to get scene detection AI and slight improvements to auto mode. Without that the shortcomings in auto are just big.


Gcam works perfectly for pictures, but I doubt colours will ever work well...if any gcam can add automatic white balance adjustment against shooting a white paper, that would be good enough (and could be used to build up a white balance Profile if it saves it and puts some AI behind).

And yeah the problem with exposure on the stock cam is that the preview is too bad. You cannot see those problems on preview because the dynamic range is too little on preview vs actual picture.
Yes the pictures that work well are much better than iphone 13 pro , but the iphone nailed 90% of our photo session today, while the vivo failed 50%.

Up to 2 hours before sunset it was fine. The closer to sunset the messier it got.


And well I managed to drain the battery today with 3:20 hours screen on time to shutdown.

Forgot to turn of google photos sync and my battery dropped like no tomorrow.. yeah surely the next 4G tower was 15km away. 800mhz. But I could literally watch the percentage dropping.
It's 4G/5G data that drains this battery like crazy. On wifi all is fine. As soon as you have average to below average reception the battery drain is crazy like I've never seen on another phone before. And surely it's not only me.

I tested against iphone 13 pro and screen off 4G data on same network at the same time with pretty identical speeds was 1% vs 5% for again a 20 minutes test. So fix that and battery life will be outstanding (yes on wifi it's better than iphone!). If that cannot be fixed this phone will be doomed for outdoor use if you need some GB per day... I'll put some screenshots in the battery drain topic.

 

[Thanos88]

The last 2 weeks was Chinese new year so no updates to be expected, since this week everyone is back to work again (last week many were still off).

The trial upgrade has a bug in the camera, sometimes when you get close to the sun it will overexpose so much that your screen turns white. Solve it by leaving the camera and going back in. Happened to me 3 times today around 90-60minutes before sunset trying to shoot portrait partly against the sun.

In general exposure was really a gamble. 1/3 of all shots (maybe 150) were really badly exposed. Colors have to check on PC. On Smartphone display they looked fine. But in general (same as in dxomark review), faces are underexposed when Shooting against the sunset. Vivo's HDR should be able to do it but couldn't. After some time I gave up on the camera and went gcam only, problem with gcam is that we have no proper colour profile and colours are a bit all over the table, but exposure is spot on, HDR enhanced works perfectly, and sharpness is anyhow unrivalled.
So yeah great shots today, but all of them will need editing because out of the box they are lacking. As you simply cannot fix exposure well in the post, I switched to gcam.

If vivo can fix the HDR problems in Shooting against light sources on faces, and fix exposure in general against light sources and fix colours at night - it only needs to get scene detection AI and slight improvements to auto mode. Without that the shortcomings in auto are just big.


Gcam works perfectly for pictures, but I doubt colours will ever work well...if any gcam can add automatic white balance adjustment against shooting a white paper, that would be good enough (and could be used to build up a white balance Profile if it saves it and puts some AI behind).

And yeah the problem with exposure on the stock cam is that the preview is too bad. You cannot see those problems on preview because the dynamic range is too little on preview vs actual picture.
Yes the pictures that work well are much better than iphone 13 pro , but the iphone nailed 90% of our photo session today, while the vivo failed 50%.

Up to 2 hours before sunset it was fine. The closer to sunset the messier it got.


And well I managed to drain the battery today with 3:20 hours screen on time to shutdown.

Forgot to turn of google photos sync and my battery dropped like no tomorrow.. yeah surely the next 4G tower was 15km away. 800mhz. But I could literally watch the percentage dropping.
It's 4G/5G data that drains this battery like crazy. On wifi all is fine. As soon as you have average to below average reception the battery drain is crazy like I've never seen on another phone before. And surely it's not only me.

I tested against iphone 13 pro and screen off 4G data on same network at the same time with pretty identical speeds was 1% vs 5% for again a 20 minutes test. So fix that and battery life will be outstanding (yes on wifi it's better than iphone!). If that cannot be fixed this phone will be doomed for outdoor use if you need some GB per day... I'll put some screenshots in the battery drain topic.

Did you see my post which has the email addresses for Vivo support? I highly recommend you email them with all the bugs you're facing, they seem to be on top with their replies & looks like they're eager to help. Do drop them an email when you can , post all bugs/issues & be specific