Vivo’s Border-Less Nex Phone Packs a Camera That Pops Out

Vivo's latest flagship phone Nex, earlier showcased as the Vivo Apex prototype, is what might change the smartphone game forever. This phone is 91.24 percent screen with a pop-up front camera.

The no notch, no bezel design establishes the fact that we have indeed, stepped into the future.

Being the first phone of its kind, it still remains to be seen how well this ambitious step works out, but it sure does establish Vivo's position in a hugely competitive market.

The Nex was first showcased to the world as a concept phone, at this year's Mobile World Congress in February. Known as the Apex back then, the Nex blew people away with what it had to offer.

With over 90 percent phone to screen ratio, it gets rid of all borders, notch, focusing on making the screen-to-body ratio as close to 100 percent as they can.

What also remains to be seen is that how well Vivo has thought over the mechanics of the pop-up camera. For the selfie-addicts, this pop-up feature should be able to survive at least thousands of actuations, and a lot is dependent on this feature as this might determine the tech behind more border-less phones in the future.

However, the screen and the pop-up camera are not the only quirks the Nex has to offer, this thing is loaded with technology.

It has become evident that the Nex is wrapped over a screen, so where’s the earpiece speaker? Nowhere, apparently. The Nex uses glass-vibrating screen soundcasting technology to replace the traditional earpiece. Confused? In simple words, the screen itself acts as the speaker.

Although, this technology remains subject to testing, multiple reports claim that the prototype phone’s speaker system works quite well.

The Nex also uses an in-display fingerprint sensor, first seen on Vivo's X21. The fingerprint sensor, unlike the Apex concept, doesn't cover a big part of the screen (as shown in the Apex), but is restricted to a thumb-sized area.

The X21’s in-display sensor is not as responsive as the traditional fingerprint sensor, but Vivo says their third generation sensor has improved on that front.

Another interesting thing about the Nex is that despite being arguably the most advanced phone, it still keeps the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is a great decision by Vivo, in order to not completely disengage from past technology.

Also, the fact that the headphone jack does not compromise on any other aspects of the phone is what leads us to rethink why some manufacturers are doing away with it.

The phone was launched at Yuan 4,998 (Rs 52,500 approx) for the top-end variant, This is all we have come to know about the phone yet, more details will come in after people start using the device. One really hopes that Vivo will bring this device to India as well.