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Mobile World Congress is one of the world's two biggest smartphone events–one could argue the annual iPhone launch is bigger–with brands from around the world lining up to show journalists, analysts and industry insiders what they have in store. While Samsung used the stage to launch its S9 flagship and Huawei took journalists on a ride in a Porsche driven by a phone, it was arguably Vivo that stole the show, despite having no official show booth or product launch.
That was because the Shenzhen brand, behind closed doors, showed off a concept device named the Apex that was virtually bezel-less save for a tiny sliver of a chin. It's safe to assume that Vivo has caught people's attention.
In yet another example of "China speed," that concept device is now a reality less than four months later. Unveiled in Shanghai two weeks ago, the Vivo Nex is a refined, consumer version of the Apex, and I've been testing it for the past week and a half.
Almost all screen
I've been bashing bezels and calling for phones to shave them off as much as possible since 2016, when I criticized the original Google Pixel and iPhone 7's outdated designs. And so when Xiaomi launched the Mi Mix near the tail end of that year, I was all aboard the bandwagon and hailed it my favorite smartphone of 2016.
But in order to eliminate bezels, the Mi Mix either sacrificed or awkwardly relocated crucial smartphone components such as proximity sensor, earpiece and selfie camera. Those things didn't bother me because I dislike selfies and I rarely make phone calls, but there were others who found the Mi Mix unusable. And so when Apple released its own "bezel-less" phone a year later, it went for the compromise of having a notch. That way, the iPhone X could be sort of/almost bezel-less but not give up the selfie camera or all those sensors.
Since then, phonemakers have jumped on the notch bandwagon, concluding that this small compromise is the best way to go. I'm inclined to agree–the notch really isn't a big deal, especially on Android–but with the Nex, Vivo is trying to come up with ways to avoid the Sophie's Choice of needing a notch or sacrificing important components.
Juxtaposition of new and old
Vivo accomplished this by using tech that is both cutting edge and a throwback to older times. The Nex has crammed the proximity sensor underneath its display. It still works perfectly fine, it's just not visible to us. The earpiece? That's been eliminated, replaced by a speaker that uses bone-conduction tech to transmit sound through the glass to our ears. I made several phone calls with the Nex with no issues.
Since Vivo is cramming things under the screen, it might as well add one more: a fingerprint scanner. First introduced in the Vivo X21, the Nex uses an in-display fingerprint sensor developed by Synaptics that peeps through pixels to scan your digits. The good news is the tech has been improved since the X21, so the Nex's fingerprint reader is a bit faster and more accurate.
So all that stuff above is cutting edge tech--the stuff phonemakers have been dreaming of for years. As for the final and most crucial component, the selfie camera, Vivo went with older tech: a motorized pop-up module located at the top of the phone.
It works as described: anytime the selfie camera is called upon (whether in the Nex's native camera app or third party apps such as Instagram), the module pops up. So far, this action of a camera physically rising up from inside the phone has worked smoothly and relatively quickly (it takes about half a second for the module to come out), but I can't help but worry about the durability of the mechanism because it is ultimately a motorized, moving part. Vivo claims its engineers have popped the module up and down 50,000 times with no problems, which means it should survive at least three or four years of use without issues. For me at least. For a selfie-obsessed millennial, they might hit the 50k mark by month five.
True immersion
Concerns about the selfie camera aside, the Nex looks stunning and viewing full-screen media such as Instagram Stories or YouTube videos for the first time drew an audible "whoa" from me. It's not just that the Nex doesn't have a notch, it's that the screen is huge, at 6.6-inches. It's a Samsung AMOLED panel, so colors are vibrant, blacks are pure and reds are punchy. And despite the large size, the phone is still not hard to grip with one hand due to the slim/tall aspect ratio and virtual lack of bezel.
There are rumors that Apple will release a 6.5-inch version of the next iPhone this fall, and I'm all for it. Because after using the Vivo Nex and OnePlus 6–phones with screens north of 6.3-inches–I find the 5.8-inch displays on the iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy S9 tiny and cramped.
The back of the Vivo Nex is the usual glass sandwich design, but Vivo gave the back glass this pattern of tiny individual grids that diffracts light. Basically, this phone has a black glass but when light shines off it there is a rainbow effect. Everything else is similar: there's a dual camera set-up with a vertically aligned module; subtle curves at the left and right side of the back, and chamfered edges.
The Nex's in-hand feel is very similar to the OnePlus 6, Vivo X21 and Oppo R15 Pro, just a bit heavier and longer.
Vivo's bulked up specs, held back by software
The last few Vivo devices I tested all used mid-tier Qualcomm chipsets, but the Nex, being a cutting-edge phone, obviously needed more, and that's what Vivo gave us: Snapdragon 845 with 8GB of RAM. That's the most powerful combo offered in Android right now.
But, the Vivo Nex doesn't run as fast or smooth as the OnePlus 6, despite having the exact same power. The reason is because OnePlus has a clean, almost stock software while the Nex runs Vivo's heavy, bloated Android skin, named FunTouch. Vivo's software has no app tray, changes the location of Android's shortcut toggles, and comes with a lot of pre-installed Chinese apps (that can thankfully be uninstalled).
The Nex isn't slow by any means, but it doesn't zip like a OnePlus 6, and it's the fault of FunTouch.
I understand that my preference for a cleaner, Google-like stock Android look and feel is a matter of opinion (though it almost certainly is a majority opinion), and I can't objectively say FunTouch's iOS-inspired direction is inferior to what Google offers. That said, there are issues with Vivo's software that are objectively bad. For example, you cannot search within the settings page. So if you need to find something obscure, like say battery optimization or data usage management, you'll have to scroll through the settings and dig through several layers to find what you need. On literally every other phone, you can just search for what you need in settings and get there in a second.
Still, I didn't encounter too many issues using the Nex over the past few days, except for the fact that, despite having a large 4,000 mAh battery, the Nex still aggressively killed background apps resulting in broken push notifications. But, there is a workaround for that.
With the Nex, Vivo has also introduced its own digital assistant named Jovi. Like Samsung, Vivo has given Jovi a dedicated hardware button, and it is also not remappable. Unfortunately, Jovi can only speak Mandarin Chinese right now, but I was able to converse with it without problems and found Jovi relatively intelligent. Still, it's no match for the Google Assistant, and everyone living in places where Google isn't banned would be better served just using it instead.
Camera, battery, the rest...
The Vivo Nex's 12-megapixel main shooter can produce high-quality stills. Shutter speed and focus times are fast, and images are well-balanced, though the colors are a bit muted. Vivo's been hyping up its A.I.-powered camera since a couple of releases ago but with the Nex, I'm finally able to see it in action. The Nex's camera can identify objects and scenes like Huawei's and LG's recent releases, and tweak image quality accordingly. I find the Nex's A.I. image tuning to be more pleasing and less aggressive than Huawei's.
There's a secondary 5-megapixel camera on the back that is purely for depth detection, so no 2X lossless zoom here. In general bokeh shots are solid, but nothing the OnePlus 6 or Huawei P20 Pro or Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S can't do as well.
Night time photography is hit and miss. The Nex's camera has a large 1.4-micron size, so it can pull in lighting better than the OnePlus 6 or even the iPhone X. But overall dynamic range tend to be off and the in really dark situations the image processing still overcompensates for noise by softening images.
In the below set, notice how the Nex's image (left) is brighter than the iPhone X's (middle) and OnePlus 6's image (right).
Battery life is great. As mentioned, the Nex has a 4,000 mAh cell, which is the largest in flagship phones, and it can power this 6.6-inch OLED panel all day. Vivo's aggressive battery optimization isn't even needed.
A collection of futuristic ideas
The Vivo Nex shouldn't have worked so well--it is, after all, a collection of gen one tech that hasn't been tested in the mainstream. But during my week of use, I was consistently surprised by how well everything worked. The under-screen fingerprint reader, while still slower than a traditional sensor, recognized my finger mostly fine. The pop-up selfie camera produced decent quality selfies and popped up in relatively short time (around half a second). The invisible proximity sensor somehow is able to detect my hand hovering over the phone during dozens of tests.
The Nex isn't without its flaws. The software needs major work. There is no wireless charging or waterproofing. And with the 8GB RAM/256 internal storage version selling at $820, the Nex isn't cheap compared to Chinese peers.
But if you're a gadget geek who's dreamed of a device that's all screen–just as sci-fi movies have depicted for decades–then the Nex is the closest thing yet.
More importantly for Vivo or smartphone industry watchers, the Nex will be available in Europe and Canada, making it the first Vivo device to hit western markets. For a company that's already top five in market share based just on China and India sales, this expansion could bring big things. Between Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi and Huawei, Chinese brands are really beginning to leave a footprint out west. The Samsungs, LGs and Sonys of the world better be prepared.
