In just a month after it was launched in China, the brand new vivo X5Pro has made its way to Malaysia with much fanfare last week. In general, the phone’s rather grand launch event seems to be a sign of confidence from vivo that its new smartphone might fare well in our market.
Truth to be told though, things are not going to be that easy for X5Pro in our market since there are plenty of Snapdragon 615-based smartphones that have been officially released into Malaysia this year so far. Hence, we are going to take a quick look at how the new device from vivo fares against other smartphones with the same processor.
Given its position at an SoC for mid-range devices, the Snapdragon 615 seems to be quite popular with manufacturers. For the past six months alone, there are at least seven such smartphones made their way into Malaysia and it is even more interesting to note that these devices are available at various price points too:
Even though the specifications between these devices looked quite similar, their pricing are quite different from each other. It is hard to say why but we believe that one of the big reason might be because of the materials that were used to build these devices. For example, those Snapdragon 615-based devices that are priced more than RM 1,000 usually uses a mixture of aluminium or steel alongside intricate design or pattern.
As for those sub-RM 1,000 devices, they are usually made of polycarbonate or plastic with straight forward physical design. Of course, there might be economical matters such as extra features, profit margin, marketing costs and many more but those are not something that manufacturers discuss out in the open.
All in all, the vivo X5Pro’s journey in Malaysia is not going to be easy and it goes without saying that vivo need to play its card right if it wants Malaysian consumers to have its new smartphone as their choice. Furthermore, what we listed above are just for the first half of the year alone and there are still more Snapdragon 615-based devices coming to Malaysia very soon such as the Oppo R7 series, and Lenovo Vibe Shot which going to make the field even more tougher but a joy for many consumers to consider their options.
