Is Vivo’s flagship smartphone going to be your “Nex” purchase?

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Vivo’s single-handedly solved the ‘notch issue’ with their upcoming Nex flagship smartphone. The trick is an elevating selfie cam that comes out of the top edge of the device when needed.

With no need to use a notch or huge bezels to house sensors and camera, the Nex has a screen-to-body ratio of 91.24 percent. There’s still a tiny ‘chin’ at the bottom of the device, but it’s still impressive.

The Nex is based on the Apex concept phone that was at the Mobile World Congress in February. Further adding to the bezel-less design, Vivo’s glass-vibrating ‘screen sound-casting technology’ replaces the earpiece speaker, and there’s an in-display fingerprint sensor. Vivo says that the sensor improves on speed over their similarly-equipped X21 phone.

Edit: Vivo

Everything under the hood is also flagship quality, with a Snapdragon 845 SoC, 8GB of RAM, a huge 4,000mAh battery, 256GB of storage and a 6.59-inch 1080p OLED display panel. There’s also a slightly cheaper model with a Snapdragon 710, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

The back camera is 12 megapixels with a f/1.8 lens coupled with a 5-megapixel f/2.4 module, and the trick pop-up selfie camera is 8 megapixels and f/2.0. The notch may be gone, but the headphone jack isn’t — the Nex still has one. It weighs in at 199g and is 7.98mm thick, so it’s large by modern standards but, oh boy, that bezel-less screen makes up for it.

Unfortunately for us in the West, the Vivo Nex will be a China-market only phone for the foreseeable future. That said, there’s no end of resellers that will probably carry the phone. It will be priced at 4,998 yuan (about $780) for the top model, which is quite a bit cheaper than the 8,316-yuan iPhone X.

We look forward to seeing how it sells, and we’ve reached out to Vivo for more information.

What do you think about the notch-less Nex? Let us know in the comments below.

In other phone news:

• Vivo X21 is the first smartphone with a fingerprint scanner in the display
• Phone companies have been “slamming and cramming” us and the FCC wants it to stop
• Girls face a higher risk of having a smartphone addiction

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.