Vivo Nex With All-Screen Design, Pop-Up Front Camera Announced In China

Vivo has officially announced the Vivo Nex in Shanghai, China. The Vivo Nex features a bezel-less design, an in-display fingerprint scanner and a pop-up front-facing camera.

The Vivo Nex is based on the Apex concept phone that the company first revealed back in February during Mobile World Congress 2018. Like the Apex, the Vivo Nex is an all-screen phone and it doesn’t have a notch on top of its display. The Nex features a screen-to-body ratio of 91.24 percent but it still has a very slim bezel at the bottom of its display. Speaking of the display, the one on the device is a 6.59-inch OLED panel with a 1080p full HD+ resolution.

Inside, the Vivo Nex is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and it’s packing a huge 4,000 mAh battery. On the back, the Nex comes with dual cameras: a main 12-megapixel camera and a secondary 5-megapixel camera. The main camera features Dual pixel technology to provide fast focusing and both cameras have optical and electronic image stabilization, according to Android Authority. The cameras support Portrait mode, Live Photos, Beauty Mode, AI HDR and AR stickers.

Based on specs alone, the Nex is a formidable handset that can take on any of the current generation Android flagship phones. However, the Vivo Nex comes with some pretty unique hardware features that makes it stand out from the rest of the pack.

The Vivo Nex’s display also functions as the device’s speaker. Vivo says that it’s using “Screen SoundCasting Technology,” which vibrates the glass of the display to produce audio, according to The Verge. This technology is similar to bone-conducting headphones. This replaces the earpiece and it should provide good sound quality when making calls.

Another thing about the Nex’s display is that it has the fingerprint scanner under it. Like the Vivo X21, a portion of the bottom half of the display will light up to indicate where the user will place their finger to authenticate their access to the phone. Vivo says that the recognition area is larger and is 10 percent faster than its previous in-display fingerprint scanners.

The last thing that makes the Vivo Nex the most exciting phone of the year is its pop-up front-fcaing camera. Like the Apex concept phone, the front-facing camera on the Nex pops out from the top edge of the phone when users switch from the rear camera to the front. The camera will lower automatically after users close the camera app.

The camera itself features an 8MP sensor and the motor that pushes it upwards is able to push up to 500g and withstand a thrust force of 45KG, according to Android Central. Vivo says that the camera can be raised and lowered over 50,000 times, which should alleviate any concerns over possible hardware failure.

The Vivo Nex is available now in China for 4,498 yuan (around US$700) for the 128GB model and 4,998 yuan (around US$780) for the 256GB model. Unfortunately, there’s no word yet on whether or not it will reach other markets.