So you'd like to make certain your phone isn't connecting to anything, hearing, seeing, or sensing anything at all, right? Now you can make that happen. Before now, users needed to gain root access (read: not easy for the average person) and potentially void their warranty. Now it's easy. All you need to know is where to look!
While Samsung and Huawei argue over who has the better folding phone, Vivo is taking a shot at turning heads with its new Vivo APEX 2019 Concept phone. Throwing away all buttons and holes, the seamless unibody design practically changes the way we interact with smartphones. At an exclusive press event, however, the Chinese OEM explains how it isn't only changing the way phones look, it's also changing how they are made.
Vivo might call dibs on innovations like the in-screen fingerprint scanner, the first elevating camera, dual displays, or seamless button-less phones, but when it comes to battery charging tech, its cousin OPPO has a head start. That might not be true for long as the Chinese manufacturer strikes up a partnership with Energous to bring the latter's over-the-air "true" wireless charging technology to future generations of Vivo smartphones.
Vivo was the first phone maker to come up with the elevating camera solution to bezels, a design that has been copied or modified by others. With the Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition and Vivo APEX 2019 concept, it almost seemed that the company was abandoning its own innovation. Not quite. Instead, Vivo is actually making that innovation accessible to more users by putting it in its latest V series phone, the Vivo V15Pro. With that elevating camera, a triple camera system, and more AI features than you can remember, the Vivo V15Pro aims to bring cutting-edge technology, and buzzwords, to a broader market.
The near future is a race to the first real-deal functional and worthwhile foldable display smartphone, and iQOO seems to be right up front of the pack. We don't yet have evidence of a final, real smartphone just yet - but the renders look top-notch. If what we're seeing here translates into a real product in the near future, big-name brands bringing foldable devices to the market better watch their back - this might be a real contender.
Last year, Vivo launched a rather interesting solution to notches in its Vivo NEX S: a pop-up front facing camera. It was certainly a neat idea, especially if you hate notches in any form, because it means no cutouts on your nice edge-to-edge display. For as novel as the idea is, it's one that hasn't really caught on in the world of smartphone design, as many manufacturers seem to be gravitating toward hole-punch cutouts on the display for their selfie cameras.
Some Chinese companies are taking the risks bigger OEMs don’t want to make to find alternative solutions for the design problems that plague smartphones these days. Though not actually the first (Russian company Yota can have that title), ZTE’s nubia and Vivo have both come out with smartphones that not only have a screen on both sides, they’ve also survived JerryRigEverything’s tests. Now all that’s left is to open up the Vivo NEX DDE to see what’s inside, hopefully without breaking anything.
With the rise of unconventional smartphone designs, from elevating cameras to sliding backs to button-less whole slabs of glass, users might be left wondering if all these fanciness comes at the price of durability and reliability. The good news is that phones have become even more resilient these, even if it means they're harder to repair, too. The slightly bad news is that not all of them are that durable. With two screens front and back, the Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition almost begs to be tested. Fortunately, JerryRigEverything was only too happy to oblige.
Meizu and Vivo are trying to usher in a new breed of smartphones, a kind of smartphone that even Apple is believed to be considering. The kind of smartphone that's glass on all sides and edges, unbroken by any seam or hole, aside perhaps for the cameras on the back. The Meizu Zero and Vivo APEX 2019 Concept Phone are truly sights to behold. They still leave a few questions open, probably to be answered at MWC 2019 next week. But whether they get answered or not, there are a few things that make this kind of unibody phone far too ahead of their time.
Chinese smartphone makers are at it again. Last year, Vivo and OPPO tried to reinvent smartphone design with their elevating cameras. This year, Meizu and Vivo are trying to usher in the age of seamless unibody phones. The former kicked it of with the Meizu Zero yesterday and now Vivo is doing the same. But while the Vivo APEX 2019 Concept Phone is undoubtedly a thing of beauty, it naturally raises a few usability questions that we won’t be able to answer until we wrap our hands around one.
Today some images of the Vivo Apex 2019 were leaked - or revealed on purpose - before the official launch of the Vivo Apex 2019. These images showed the device to look, at first, like a smartphone without a frontside camera and with a near-full-coverage front display. The back was silver, with two camera lenses and an LED flash - also, no buttons appeared on the sides, the top, or the bottom.
It seems that Vivo is really into pushing the boundaries of smartphone design that you have to wonder if it’s making any profits from them. The Vivo NEX S was an interesting oddity at best and while the NEX Dual Display Edition is arguably more practical, it is also more expensive. The Chinese company doesn’t seem to be stopping there either because based on one of the most prominent leaksters on the Internet, Vivo is working on a “Waterdrop” phone that will “subvert people’s past perception of smartphones.”