VIVO has introduced one of its midrange smart phones in the country, the Y21 packs some interesting features that will appeal to most Kenyans such as a larger battery that’s expected to last an entire day. The midrange smartphone segment is very lucrative here in Kenya, and VIVO has definitely had a special eye on the segment given just the number of devices the manufacturer has so far introduced in the largest East African economy.
There’s nothing interesting when it comes to this model other than that it has what it takes to deliver smart features for the average user. Under the hood, we get midrange level specs, nothing out of the ordinary except for a better battery capacity. With a 5,000mAh battery that’s also capable of supporting 18W fast charging, power issues shouldn’t be a problem to many. According to VIVO, the Y21 should be able to reach 34 percent charge in just half an hour, which is impressive considering just how long normal charging takes to accomplish the same.
When it comes to the display, there’s nothing groundbreaking, in fact one would argue the display panel is far behind from what you’d expect from a device at this price point. While the overall real estate is great at 6.51inches, the panel resolution is way low at 1600×720 pixels. Therefore, don’t expect images and text to match high-res panels on other devices.
Under the hood is a MediaTek Helio P35 chipset that’s complemented with 4GB RAM. And while the 4GB RAM is within our barebones minimum, the manufacturer has introduced an additional functionality to further extend the total available physical memory by 1GB just in case it’s not enough.
VIVO Y21 will be shipped with android version 11, which is currently the latest official build, but we’d have loved to see android 12 that’s just around the corner installed. According to Kenya’s VIVO brand manager Mr. James Irungu, this mid-ranger is aimed at the youth who will like the enclosed 8MP selfie camera and dual 13MP+2MP secondary sensors.