Vivo places itself in the spotlight yet again during the 2018 Mobile World Congress with a preview of the Apex smartphone with outstanding features included.
The Shenzen-based company previously impressed the crowd during the CES 2018 held earlier this year with its X20 Plus UD. The smartphone was reportedly manufactured together with Synaptics and featured the world's first under-display fingerprint sensor. Industry experts were reportedly impressed with how the technology accurately functions without compromising the display's integrity.
Now, its concept model parade features vibrating OLED panels, a pop-up camera sensor, and a half-screen fingerprint scanner.
The Demand For Smaller Bezels
Just like most flagship smartphones that follow the trend of bezel-reduction, the Apex boasts of rounded corners that appear almost-bezel-less on the top and on each side. Meanwhile, the bottom chin features a very small protrusion that hardly detracts from its edge-to-edge design.
The first thing users immediately notice is the absence of a front-facing camera and earpiece on the top portion of the device. The company remarkably relocated its selfie unit within a small enclosure that pops up from the top frame. Meanwhile, the gadget delivers sound directly through its OLED display via its SoundCasting audio-conduction technology.
These workarounds allowed the company to circumvent the need for a notch or bezel to house the components and sensors that provide the aforementioned functions.
Biometric Security Integration
Vivo further improved the key feature flaunted by the X20 Plus UD and expanded the usable surface area on the Apex. Although it was not officially listed, experts believe that the smartphone still uses Synaptics' under-display sensor albeit a newer model that could scan the user's biometric print over a larger space on the touchscreen.
The demo unit available allowed people to use what appeared to be the entire bottom half of the display to trigger the fingerprint sensor. Sources speculate that the commercial model could allow the user to set the device to require two fingerprints simultaneously in order to unlock or disable some of its security features.
Hardware Specifications
Since the Vivo Apex is still a concept model, the final specifications were not revealed yet. However, the company was able to list some of the details, which are still subject to change in the retail version.
The unit comes with a 6-inch edge-to-edge OLED touchscreen with 2160 x 1080 display resolution. The bezels reportedly measure 1.8mm for the top and sides, while the bottom lip is around 4.3mm thick. Its hidden front-facing camera is an 8-megapixel unit with a dual-camera main shooter of undeclared details on the back. There is no word on a potential release date and price as yet.
