The vivo X90, launched in China last November, began its international rollout this year with the vivo X90 Pro. We already reviewed the X90 Pro and found it to be an exemplary flagship smartphone with impressive imaging skills, but now we got a chance to spend some time with the more affordable vivo X90. We used the vivo X90 for a month and here’s what we found about it.
The vivo X90 comes in a blue-colored retail box similar to the X90 Pro’s box with the same contents. You get a protective case, a SIM card ejection tool, a USB-C cable, a 120W charger, and the usual paperwork. The package doesn’t include USB-C wired earphones nor a 3.5mm headphone jack adapter.
The vivo X90 is built around a 6.78″ FullHD+ curved AMOLED display, protected by SCHOTT Xensation α glass. The panel has 120 Hz screen refresh rate and 1,300 nits peak brightness. It also has a punch hole in the center for the 32 MP selfie camera.
Additionally, there’s a fingerprint scanner underneath the screen for biometric authentication. We found it to be fast and accurate in our usage and quite like it, but we don’t like its positioning. The UD fingerprint reader is close to the bottom bezel, which makes it difficult to reach. This is also the case with the vivo X90 Pro. Placing the fingerprint reader a tad higher, like the vivo X80 Pro, would have been more convenient and offered a better unlocking experience.
The vivo X90 has the Dimensity 9200 SoC at the helm – the same chip that powers the more expensive vivo X90 Pro. It comes with up to 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256 GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Ours came with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. Regardless of the memory configuration you opt for, the smartphone runs Android 13-based Funtouch OS 13 out of the box since Origin OS is still restricted to Chinese units.
Our unit is currently up to the slightly dated May 1, 2023 security patch level. vivo has promised three generations of Android upgrades and three years of “regular security updates.” How regularly vivo manages to roll out the security patches is something only time can tell.
The vivo X90 comes pre-installed with third-party apps, but fortunately, most of them can be uninstalled if you want. It’s also worth mentioning that the vivo X90 comes with uninstallable Hot Apps and Hot Games, which the X90 Pro doesn’t. It’s unclear whether that’s a cost-cutting measure or because the X90 is cheaper than the premium X90 Pro.
The software experience you get with the vivo X90 is the same as what you get with the X90 Pro, so we suggest you read our vivo X90 Pro review if you want to learn more about Funtouch OS 13.
