Vivo’s latest flagship offering, Vivo Nex, was launched in India today. Curiosity around the smartphone has centered around its motorised pop-up camera, edge-to-edge display with very little bezels, an in-display fingerprint scanner. Vivo Nex features, specifications Vivo Nex features a 6.59-inch, full HD+ AMOLED display with a resolution of 2316x1080 pixels and a screen-to-body ratio of 91.24%. The phone is powered by the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, which also powers the OnePlus 6, and is paired with 8GB of RAM. Available with storage variants of 128GB and 256GB, the Vivo smartphone will be fuelled by a 4,000mAh battery with Qualcomm’s Quick Charging. On the software side, the phone runs on Android Oreo 8.1 with Vivo’s Funtouch OS 4 running on top. The Nex is manufactured in Vivo’s smartphone facility in Greater Noida. What’s so special in Vivo Nex’s camera The fascinating pop-up camera mechanism houses only a front facing 8MP selfie camera, unlike the Oppo Find X in which both the front and the rear facing cameras are housed in the motorised slider. The dual rear camera on the Vivo Nex has a 12MP+5MP configuration and comes with 4-axis Optical Image Stabilisation. Other camera features include f/1.8 aperture, AI scene detection for white balance correction, AI portrait framing that assists you in placing your subject in the frame, AI-HDR which helps in bringing out highlights and enhancing the backlight of a subject, P3 Colour Gamut for better colour reproduction. The extreme measure of going with a motorised housing was taken to get rid of the notch on top of the phones and expand the screen further to the edges. Vivo Nex’s price The phone is priced at ₹ 44,990 and will be available for pre-order till July 25 exclusively through Amazon India and vivo.com. Recently Vivo offered an Amazon Pay cashback of ₹ 1,000 on the phone during the Prime Day sale that concluded on July 18. Those who claimed the cashback will get the refund credited to their Amazon Pay balance on or before August 15. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now! ! Topics<doc-sep>Buy now on eBay The best part of the move to truly bezel-less phones is the weird and wacky solutions to the question of where to put everything that used to live above and below the display. Front-facing cameras, fingerprint scanners, speakers and sensors all need relocating if we’re going to have proper full-screen phones. The Vivo Nex valiantly addresses those necessities, in pursuit of that notch-less and bezel-free ideal. It doesn’t succeed on every front, and there are more than a few caveats you need to be aware of before you decide to import one. As you might have guessed, owning a first-gen smartphone from the future – today – isn’t a pain-free experience. It’s a gorgeous and exciting phone, but sometimes window shopping is better than a shopping spree. That is why, ultimately, the Vivo Nex should probably remain an object of desire rather than become the phone in your pocket. About this Vivo Nex review: I have been using the Chinese version of the Vivo Nex S for two weeks: a few days in China on a data-only SIM and the rest of the time in Berlin, Germany on the Blau network switching between Wi-Fi and cellular data. At the time of publishing this review, the Nex was running Android 8.1 Oreo with Vivo’s FunTouch OS version PD1805_A_1.14.5 and the June 1 security patch. The Vivo Nex was provided to Android Authority for review purposes by Vivo’s PR agency. We’re holding off on adding final review scores until we can run the Nex through its paces in our suite of custom tests. Pros: Cons: Futuristic bezel-free design Solid OLED display Competitive camera Excellent performance Eye-catching camera mechanism 22.5W fast charging support Really good wired audio Problematic software China-only release Under-performing battery Unreliable fingerprint scanner No IP rating, NFC, wireless charging Display Let’s start with what made all the Nex’s design decisions necessary: the display. The Vivo Nex houses a massive 6.59-inch Full HD+ AMOLED panel in a chassis that’s only a smidge larger than the 6-inch Pixel 2 XL. For a phone as big as this it’s surprisingly manageable, with very little bezel around the top three sides and only a small chin below the screen (1.71 mm on the sides, 2.16mm on top and 5mm below the display). The display offers all the usual OLED benefits, like deep blacks, rich colors, and an always-on display. According to Vivo’s marketing material it’s a Super AMOLED panel, but the company wouldn’t confirm it was sourced from Samsung. However, Samsung recently demoed an OLED panel with the same audio emission capabilities (more on this later) at Display Week. Regardless, in bright sunlight the Vivo Nex screen didn’t get quite as bright as I’d like, making outdoor visibility no better than most phones. (For those interested, the ambient light sensor lives underneath the 19.3:9 screen, where it peeps right through the display at the center-top of the panel.) White balance is good, as is color accuracy generally. A night light mode is available in the settings and you can adjust the color temperature to suit your blue light filtering needs. Long story short: the Vivo Nex’s display is every bit as good as you’d want an all-screen phone to be. Not everyone will be happy with the Full HD+ resolution and relatively low pixel density (1,080 x 2,316 pixels and 338ppi), but it’ll serve most consumers perfectly well — with power savings to boot. Design Accidental palm touches were never an issue for me, unlike what David experienced on the Find X. The Nex has a slightly larger chin than the Find X, but there’s nowhere to rest your hand meat on either device. Fingerprints are a problem as with most glass-backed phones, but the holographic laser etching does a great job distracting from the accumulated grease. While the Xiaomi Mi Mix was the first to remove the top and side bezels without adding a notch, it did so by including a larger bezel on the bottom, a dodgy piezoelectric earpiece speaker, and what might be the dumbest location for a front-facing camera yet. Almost in response to Xiaomi’s effort, Vivo shrinks the bezels even further, uses under-glass vibration for the earpiece speaker, and puts the front-facing camera inside the chassis of the phone, popping up on command whenever the camera app switches to the front-facing viewfinder. I could watch this all day… #VivoNEX pic.twitter.com/UdAJK2u5xa — Kris Carlon (@kriscarlon) June 21, 2018 More than the screen and its impressive 91.24 percent screen-to-body ratio, the Vivo Nex’s pop-up camera is arguably its biggest wow factor. Every time the Nex’s camera popped out from the phone, I was asked to “do it again” by whomever I was with. It elicits almost childish expressions of wonder in anyone that sees it. It’s undeniably cool and the novelty hasn’t worn off even after a couple of weeks. The downside of such a nifty piece of tech is the simple fact that adding a moving part to a smartphone adds a degree of risk. Considering the frequency with which many of us drop our phones, there’s a justifiable concern about the camera breaking or the mechanism simply wearing out over time. Vivo has shared durability data to allay those concerns, but for most people it will come down to a simple decision. You’re either comfortable with the risks, or no amount of assurances will make you think this is a good idea. The Nex's pop-up camera is arguably the biggest wow factor in a phone jam packed with them, but adding a moving part to a smartphone is a contentious decision. It’s impossible to say just how much effect the Nex’s camera mechanism has on the battery, but at least it has to be less than the Find X. Oppo’s rising camera mechanism elevates the entire top of the phone and contains both the front and back cameras. Its reliance on facial recognition means the cameras pop up every time you want to unlock your phone. By comparison, the Vivo Nex’s selfie-only power needs seem negligible, especially if you’re not terribly prone to selfies. For anyone that barely ever uses their front-facing camera, the Nex offers an ideal solution: it’s there if you need it and spares you the unsightly compromise of a notch. According to Vivo the camera module can push up to 500g in repeated trials, and it can apparently can be raised and lowered repeatedly up to 50,000 times and withstand up to 45kg of thrust force when extended. For what it’s worth I had absolutely no problems with the Nex’s elevating camera. The dust that inevitably accumulates on it didn’t actually obscure the lens, so cleaning it wasn’t as necessary as you might think. It has also proven to be more rugged than I was expecting, and I’ve been purposefully rough with it. The camera’s very snugly fit. You can’t wiggle it from side to side and pulling it upwards is fruitless. If you press down on the camera while it’s out it springs back down before taking the hint and retracting itself fully. While it’s still early days, I’m increasingly confident this thing could handle some battle scars before you have any problems with it. If you’re concerned about causing damage to the camera by dropping it you probably have more to fear from breaking the display than the camera. Audio The small bezels on the Nex’s display mean the earpiece speaker also had to be re-engineered. Rather using than a typical smartphone speaker, Vivo’s vibration motor transmits sound through the entire screen. That means when a call comes in you can place your ear anywhere on the display to hear the other person (although towards the top where the vibration motor is located is best). It sounds much like any regular smartphone speaker and isn’t as audible to those near you, as I initially expected. After a couple of weeks of using it, I can’t say I’ve found it any worse than a normal earpiece speaker. Considering the sound comes from beneath the screen itself, that’s a big win. Expect to see the same tech in more phones down the line. The Vivo Nex also has a bottom-firing speaker that gets plenty loud and offers better bass than something like the Pixel 2. The degree to which the display vibration contributes to overall audio quality is arguable, but it is noticeably less shrilly at full volume than the Pixel, giving some credibility to Vivo’s claims of “more powerful bass and softer, smoother treble.” I wouldn’t call external audio the Vivo Nex’s best selling point, but it fares no worse than the competition, achieving comparable results through some impressive technology with other benefits than just sound. There’s a set of decent bundled earbuds in the box, but the Vivo Nex has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can just use what you’ve got. The V1 chip and built-in DAC means you’ll get great audio out of a good pair of wired headphones. Vivo has put the fingerprint scanner under the display glass on the Nex and turned the screen itself into an earpiece speaker. In-display fingerprint scanner Like a lot of other things we’ve come to expect on a phone, you won’t find a visible fingerprint scanner anywhere on the Vivo Nex either. The company partnered with Goodix to include an under-glass scanner, so you can unlock your phone with your fingerprint through the display. It hasn’t gotten old, even after spending a while with this phone. Interestingly, a recent teardown revealed it’s actually a camera doing the scanning through a peephole in the display, not an ultrasonic solution. While Vivo had been working with Synaptics when we first saw this tech at CES, the scanner on the Nex is made by the same company that supplies Huawei and Xiaomi with in-display fingerprint scanners. This means that the sensor isn’t visible at any angle, unlike previous Synaptics scanners and even the Vivo X20 UD. The Vivo Nex had the first in-display fingerprint sensor in 2018. The Vivo Nex’s fingerprint reader is not as fast as a capacitive scanner and yes, it occasionally freaks out and fails to read your print at all, but I’m willing to cut it some slack. In-display tech will improve in time, and only those willing to put up with it as is would be advised to pick up a Nex, anyway. It unlocks almost instantly in the right conditions, but in less than ideal situations, the unlock animation might flash three times before it finally unlocks or fails in the attempt. The in-display fingerprint scanner is slower and less reliable than current capacitive sensors. If you need your phone unlocked in a split-second every single time, the Nex is not for you. Given the frequency with which we unlock our phones, this could understandably make or break your experience. Much like the notch or the HTC U12 Plus’ capacitive power and volume buttons, it’s either something you feel strongly about or will quickly adapt to. Personally, I didn’t mind the delays or the failure to unlock much, but your mileage may vary depending on how impatient you are. When the fingerprint logo is visible on screen the camera is active; when it’s not visible it’s inactive, meaning no unlocking. If your phone is lying on a table, you’ll have to give it a nudge to activate the fingerprint camera or hit the power button. It’s also activated by movement, so picking up your phone activates the scanner camera automatically. You can turn off the fingerprint logo on the always-on display in the settings, but if you do so you’re also disabling the camera, making unlocking your phone from a screen-off state impossible. Bright ambient light can also cause issues for the fingerprint scanner, as it uses illumination from the screen to get a sufficiently contrasty image of your fingerprint. In these cases, the Nex falls back on a lock screen PIN. The Nex scanner works with banking apps and payments within WeChat and AliPay, just don’t expect it to work with many banks outside of China. The Vivo Nex is a cutting edge but flawed device that tries to do a lot of amazing things and inevitably can't do them all perfectly.<doc-sep>
Last month, Vivo India sent out invites to a launch event on the 19th of July to announce the launch of its NEX flagship smartphone in the country. Ahead of the launch event next week, the NEX listed online on Amazon.in, confirming that the handset will be launched in India as an Amazon exclusive. The leak confirms that it will be the flagship NEX S variant that will be launched in India and not the NEX A. However, it appears the smartphone will simply be called NEX and not NEX S in India. Moreover, we’ve managed to dig up the price of the Vivo NEX for the Indian market. Vivo NEX: Price in India Vivo NEX India Price On Amazon 1 of 2 The Vivo NEX price in India will be Rs. 48,990, undercutting the price of the OPPO Find X which was launched in earlier today for Rs. 59,990. The flagship smartphone will be available to pre-order on Amazon India starting 19th July at 1 PM. Vivo NEX: Launch Offers And More Revealed Amazon.in will be offering up to Rs.5,000 extra off on exchange on the Vivo NEX, which could potentially take the pricing down to just under the Rs.45,000 mark. HDFC Bank credit and debit cardholders will be able to avail cashback on purchasing the smartphone, although the exact amount hasn’t been listed. Vivo NEX customers will also be eligible to receive Mobile Damage Insurance, No Cost EMI up to 12 months, and assured buyback. Jio subscribers will receive additional data offers as well. Vivo NEX Amazon.in Listing 1 of 8 Vivo NEX: Specifications, Features The Vivo NEX features an Ultra FullView Super AMOLED display measuring 6.59-inches diagonally with 1080 x 2316 Full HD+ resolution and a 19.3:9 aspect ratio. Apart from boasting an impressive 91.24% screen-to-body ratio, the Vivo NEX comes with a third generation in-display fingerprint sensor as well. Since it is the flagship variant that Vivo is bringing to India, the NEX will be powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset clocked at 2.7 GHz with an Adreno 630 GPU. In terms of memory, the variant that will be coming to India will include 8GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. Further expansion is not possible since the NEX lacks a microSD card slot. At the rear is a 12MP + 5MP dual-camera setup with the primary sensor boasting large 1.4um pixel size, Dual Pixel PDAF for fast autofocus speeds, and 4-axis optical image stabilization. However, unlike the OnePlus 6 and the ASUS ZenFone 5Z, the Vivo NEX does not support 4K video recording at 60 fps. It can only capture 4K videos at 30 fps. The pop-up selfie camera module offers 8MP resolution and is paired with an f/2.0 aperture. Connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual-band, Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, USB Type-C port, and Dual 4G VoLTE. The smartphone packs a large 4000mAh non-removable battery with 22W fast charging support. Vivo NEX comes with a dedicated AI button on the left-side to enable access to a wide range of AI services. In the audio department, the Vivo NEX includes dual CS43199 + SSM6322 amplifier for audiophile-grade sound quality. In terms of software, the Vivo NEX will ship with the Android 8.1 Oreo-based Funtouch OS 4.0 out of the box.