The day has arrived where the all screen phone has become a reality. The big dogs, Apple and Samsung, have been endlessly trying to compete with one another in the bezel-less smartphone market. The closest we’ve seen is Apple’s attempt on the iPhone X, despite the famous notch for the camera internals.
However, it seems that the Chinese tech companies are getting more crafty and creative in their design and manufacturing.
The Vivo NEX is the biggest leap forward in offering an all screen phone. Some sources say this is the phone with no bezel.
WELL… EXPLAIN THIS!
The phone has a bezel. You might think that ditching the front facing camera and fingerprint sensor would allow for less bezel. But, unfortunately, no. This is not the case. Although the Vivo NEX hasn’t 100% delivered on what we expected, the smartphone does have some interesting aspects.
Display
The display is the most interesting, innovative idea for the Vivo NEX. It packs a finger print sensor. A world first— most smartphone manufactures have embedded fingerprint sensor on the bottom front, side or top/ middle back on the phone. This technology has been in development before and had been heavily rumoured to be in the iPhone X, ahead of it’s release last year. Instead, the technology has first appeared courtesy of a tech firm who aren’t as huge in the market.
By the Looks of things, the phone is very capable and is somewhat fast at transmitting your fingerprint, to unlock the system.
The display also packs a 6.59 inch 1080P + OLED display. This is beneficial for two reasons:
- The 1080p resolution is a good standard still and saves on battery life. Which is even better considering that the phone has more screen real estate, compared to other phones of the same size, draining more power.
- The OLED display allows for brighter colours and deeper contrasts in the blacks. However, this could enable burn in, meaning that the phone will most probably show signs of orange and red flares in parts of the screen over time.
Camera
The camera is the most impressive feature that the Vivo NEX has to offer. For Vivo to achieve the highest level of bezel-less design in the phone market, they made a camera pop up, which is located at the top left of the phone. The camera pops up when you want to shoot a photo or video. Although, I would imagine that this type of interaction for the camera would result in slow launching times.
The front facing camera pop up consists of an 8 megapixel with f/2.0 aperture, whilst the rear has a 12 megapixel with a f/1.8 aperture, backed by a 5 megapixel f/2.4 module.
Other Specs, Cost and Availability
The Vivo NEX is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 8GB RAM, a 4000mAh battery and 256GB of storage! Which is all very huge at the price of 4,998 yuan (about £585), according to the Verge. All that, much cheaper than the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S9. The Vivo NEX competes strongly in the budget smartphone market, against the likes of OnePlus & Huawei, to even go the extra mile. Vivo also offer an even cheaper version of the Vivo NEX, which sportsa Qualcomm Snapdragon 710, 6GBof RAM and 128GB of storage. However, pricing for this is yet to be confirmed.
Lastly the Vivo NEX supports a Headphone jack, so that’s still one other company who hasn’t gotten rid of it. However, it does not support wireless charging or an SD card—but I don’t think you’ll be needing that considering the large storage size.
Both phones are available in China.