Vivo has made a budget smartphone available in India without making its formal announcement. The Vivo Y53i can be purchased from the company’s offline retail partners, suggests a Mumbai-based store Mahesh Telecom. Photos of the device’s box were posted on the store’s Twitter account confirming a few of its details. The said box has a maximum retail price (MRP) of Rs. 8,990 ($136) mentioned while the phone can be purchased for Rs. 7,990 ($121). On a closer look at the photos, the box contents include a charger and a USB cable, besides the device itself in Crown Gold color, with no mention about a pair of earphones.
Its specifications include a 5-inch IPS display with a qHD resolution of 960 x 540 pixels. The Y53i includes 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage while being powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 425 chipset clocked at 1.4GHz along with an Adreno 308 GPU. The dual-SIM device comes pre-loaded with Android 6.0 Marshmallow-based Funtouch OS 3.0. Weighing about 137 grams, the handset features a battery of 2,500mAh capacity and supports 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 801.11n, Bluetooth 4.2, and GPS. An 8-megapixel camera offering an f/2.0 aperture is placed on the phone’s back accompanied by an LED flash. A 5-megapixel camera is found on the front that also enables the device’s facial unlock feature.
About a year back, Vivo had announced a budget smartphone named Y53 in the Indian market sporting exactly the same set of specifications as the Y53i. It was priced a little higher at Rs. 9,990 ($151) and included a design very close to the new model. This set of features was considered dated even last year, especially the Android Marshmallow OS that was introduced by Google in 2015. Lately, the Indian market has received a number of budget smartphones from companies like Xiaomi that have at least included arguably better hardware and software at a similar or even lower price point, in some cases. In the mid-range segment, Vivo recently announced its V9 smartphone including a notched design at a price of Rs. 22,990 ($352), besides a Youth edition of the device, priced slightly lower at Rs. 18,990 ($288).
New launch #VivoY53i now available for Rs.7990/- only pic.twitter.com/lRY9Dcv8bR
— Mahesh Telecom (@MAHESHTELECOM) April 21, 2018