Design, build quality, handling
Vivo seems to have a few concurrent design trends going with its current lineup. With its vertical camera island, the V70 FE doesn’t really resemble the vanilla V70 or the V70 Elite that much, nor does it take after the X300 series. It is actually much more akin to last year’s V60 family.
With its rather large ring-LED flash positioned as a camera module underneath the two functional cameras, the V70 FE almost gives off the false impression that it is rocking three snappers on the back. In fact, that is not the case, and as we mentioned, one of the main downgrades compared to the regular V70 is the lack of a dedicated telephoto.
The back design itself looks very cohesive, and the color-matched camera island definitely helps in that department. The V70 FE can be had in a trio of colors: Ocean Blue, Muse Purple and Titanium Silver. All look quite subdued and classy in our opinion. Muse Purple has this interesting flower-like, flowing lines design near the bottom of the back panel, which does spruce things up a bit in the looks department.
In terms of materials, you are looking at a plastic backside and a plastic frame. Hopefully, neither will scratch too badly. But definitely a downgrade from the glass back and aluminum frame of the regular vivo V70.
There is some sort of hardened glass covering the front of the phone. Vivo does not specifically mention what kind, but it does note a Mohs level 4 hardness for the finish – same as the Schott Xensation Core on the regular V70 and the V70 Elite. So, in all likelihood, the V70 FE is also using some Schott product.
There is a nice little gasket around the SIM tray, and vivo did not skimp at all when it comes to ingress protection. The V70 FE gets a great IP68/69 rating, just like its more expensive V70 siblings.
The V70 FE feels perfectly solid with practically no flex or hollowness. Thanks to its broad flat sides, it offers a nice and confident grip. The plastic pack panel does gather quite a bit of grease and fingerprints, though.
The V70 FE offers a pretty standard set of controls. There are no extra special buttons or anything like that. The left-hand side is empty. Since the frame is made of plastic, there aren’t even any antenna lines visible.
vivo V70 FE
The right-hand side houses the power button and, above it, the volume rocker. Both controls are nice and wide and offer plenty of tactile feedback. No complaints there. The bottom side is a bit busy, housing the main bottom-firing speaker, main microphone, SIM tray and the Type-C port. The top has a few controls as well, including the second dedicated speaker grill, the secondary microphone and an IR blaster.
The overall shape of the V70 FE is quite modern, complete with aggressively and deeply curved edges for that trendy rounded display and corner aesthetic.
The display bezels on the front are quite thin. Even so, there are no visible sensors anywhere. Everything is nicely hidden away under the display itself.
The V70 FE uses an under-display fingerprint reader. Unlike the ones in the V70 and V70 Elite, this one here is of the simpler optical variety, instead of ultrasonic. Still, we found it to be perfectly snappy and reliable and have no complaints with it.