Back at MWC 2018, Vivo showed off a concept phone called Apex with a pop-up camera, in-display fingerprint scanner, and a 91 percent screen-to-body ratio. Today, the company is officially unveiling a production version of the phone dubbed the Vivo NEX.
The handset features a 6.59-inch FHD+ 19.3:9 aspect ratio Super AMOLED display with a 91.2 percent screen-to-body ratio. To achieve this insane screen-to-body ratio and to avoid the notch, the Vivo NEX features a pop-out selfie camera. Despite an impressive screen-to-body ratio, the Vivo NEX features a small chin at its bottom measuring in at 5.08 mm. The side bezels are also impressively thin at 1.71 mm. Vivo has done away with the earpiece and used a Screen SoundCasting Technology along with a glass-vibrating screen to reverberate sound to the top bezel of the device. There’s also a third-generation in-display fingerprint scanner which Vivo says is faster than its previous implementations. Unlike the concept Apex showed by Vivo at MWC 2018 though, the in-display fingerprint scanner only covers a small area of the bottom of the display.
Vivo has also paid attention to the back of the device which features a “Holographic Diffraction Dynamic Color.” As for specs, the Vivo NEX comes with a Snapdragon 845 chipset, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage, and a 4,000mAh battery. Vivo is also launching a slightly cheaper and lower spec’d variant of the device featuring a Snapdragon 710 chipset, 6GB RAM, and 128GB of storage. It also ditches the in-display fingerprint scanner with a fingerprint scanner located at the rear. The rear camera houses a 12MP f/1.8 aperture shooter with OIS that is paired with a 5MP f/2.4 depth sensor. At the front, there’s an 8MP f/2.0 shooter which pops up from the top bezel. Oh, and there’s also a headphone jack on the device.
The handset also comes with Vivo’s own AI called Jovi which can launch apps and can also be used to control various system settings and navigate around the UI. And it runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with Vivo’s Funtouch OS 4.0 on top of it. The Vivo NEX is only going to be available in China with a starting price tag of RMB 3,898 ($610) for the Snapdragon 710 variant. The more powerful Snapdragon 845 variant with 256GB storage will set you back by RMB 4,998 ($790).