The Vivo V11 was revealed this week with a new sort of notch on its face and an in-display fingerprint sensor. It has a full-screen display and looks, by all accounts, to be a high-priced piece of hardware. But it's not. It's released by Vivo, a company that's a very close relative to two other companies with the same parent: OPPO and OnePlus.*
It’s that time of year again. New Android version, new guessing and then waiting game for which phones will get the update and, just as importantly, when. Things have gotten better over the years, in no small part thanks to high-profile security scares and Apple gloating, but it’s far from being ideal. Ideally, that would be when lists like this will be superfluous. But until that glorious day, here are some of the smartphone makers who have gone public about their love for Pie and those that have been unsurprisingly yet annoyingly silent for the past weeks.
If it were a question of novelty, this year’s winners are Chinese brands not many might be aware of. The Vivo NEX S and then the OPPO Find X have definitely stirred up interest in alternative solutions to the bezel-less screen puzzle. But while their elevating tops are almost ingenious in their creativity, they also raise questions of durability. Fortunately, JerryRigEverything’s Zack Nelson is up to the task and has now put both phones through his triple torture test.
Today the backside see-through edition of the Vivo Nex S shows what's going on inside one of the strangest phones ever made. The Vivo Nex S is a smartphone with no immediately apparent frontside camera. Instead of an exposed camera, this device has a camera that pops up when it's activated by the camera app or a 3rd-party app.
The Vivo NEX is definitely one of the most interesting phones to come this year, but its elevating camera does raise a few questions. What does that novelty cost in terms of durability? But while we hold off on the final answer for our in-depth review, the king, or at the least the most famous YouTuber, of durability tests takes the Vivo NEX S for a light spin. And it might be cliché by now but the answer will surprise you.
There are two very interesting smartphones this year, at least as far as novelty goes. Those would be the Vivo NEX and the OPPO Find X, both with their own take on how to solve the design problem of front cameras in a bezel-less, notch-less world. Both launched initially in China but only one has revealed its intent to sell elsewhere. But while the Vivo NEX is indeed launching internationally, it sadly continues to snub the US and Western Europe.
Vivo has some crazy ideas and it’s not afraid to use them. It wasn’t content to put an in-display fingerprint scanner on the Vivo X20 UD, it had to turn half the screen into one as well. Plus, it moved the front camera out of the bezel and into a motorized sliding popup. It might bring it back to the front, though, at least to make its latest innovation possible. It’s simply calling it the Vivo TOF (time of flight) 3D Sensing Technology and it’s issuing a challenge to Apple’s own tech.
Teardowns are often done to discover how hard it is to open up and repair a device. Some teardowns, however, are more interesting because of what they might reveal inside an unconventional product. Take for example the Vivo NEX, the first phone to have an elevating front-facing camera. You might expect MyFixGuide’s teardown to just reveal how that camera works but, surprisingly, the phone apparently has more secrets inside.
Vivo loves playing the “was here first” game, whether it’s using Hi-Fi audio, having the thinnest profile, putting in 8 GB of RAM, or having an in-display fingerprint scanner. Sometimes it might make sense and sticks, other times it might just be a fad. Only history will be able to tell if the Vivo NEX is one or the other but for those who want to see what a truly, well almost truly, bezel-less phone looks like, the wait is over, especially if you live in China.
The Vivo NEX is a smartphone with full-frontal display coverage and an in-display fingerprint reader. They're the first to deliver on this set of trending themes, and they'll be the ones completely forgotten for this feat in just a few weeks. You see, Vivo is based in China, and it's in China that this smartphone will be launched. As such, there's not much chance it's going to make its way here to the USA.
Some product concepts remain just that. Others, however, gain so much interest that, despite saying one thing, a company decides to do the other thing anyway. Vivo initially insisted that its Apex prototype phone would simply be a concept and wasn't exactly going to be sold in the market. The Apex's solution to the notch problem, however, seemed to have raised enough interested buyers that Vivo seems to have changed its mind and will actually launch the smartphone next month.
Despite year after year of delays, it seems that the in-display fingerprint scanner, alternatively called a fingerprint on display (FOD), is still a goal among smartphone makers. Some are just taking a different route. Vivo, for example, used Synaptics' optical fingerprint scanner on its X20 Play UD, the first commercial phone to sport that feature. But being under the phone's screen and, therefore, subject to the same wear and tear as the display might raise some doubts and concerns over its reliability. To answer those questions, YouTube Marques Brownlee, a.k.a. MKBHD, puts that FOD to the test.