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Confirmed: vivo Apex concept phone will get public release
- The vivo Apex, an MWC 2018 concept phone, will be sold to the public at some point in either late 2018 or 2019.
- The phone is notorious for two things: an under-glass fingerprint sensor and a pop-up selfie cam, giving us a truly all-screen display.
- Pricing and specs aren’t known for now, but we can expect a similar build as the one we saw at MWC.
If you, like us, thought the vivo Apex was one of the coolest things Mobile World Congress 2018 had to offer, then we have some good news: it looks like Vivo will actually release the Apex to the general public.
There’s no word on when or how much it will cost, but at an event in China, vivo announced that the phone of the future would go into mass-production in the middle of 2018. If that indeed comes to pass, the phone wouldn’t likely hit shelves until the end of the year or possibly early 2019.
But it will be worth the wait! For those of you who didn’t follow along with our MWC 2018 coverage, the vivo Apex is a genuinely all-screen device: no notch, 91 percent screen coverage, with the bottom bezel a mere 4.3 mm in width.
As if that wasn’t cool enough, two other features make the Apex truly one-of-a-kind. First, there’s no fingerprint reader on the back; it’s actually in the screen itself. You can place your finger on any part of the lower third of the display and a fingerprint scanner underneath the glass will read your print.
Second, since there is no notch at the top of the display, there is no front-facing camera to be seen. But when you turn the camera into selfie mode, a front-facing camera pops up from the body of the phone itself, giving us the first truly original solution to the notch problem.
Since the phone hasn’t even gone into production yet, we don’t know for sure what any of the specs will be. But it’s likely that the Apex will hit the market with similar specs as the concept design we saw at MWC 2018, which included a 5.99-inch OLED panel, a Snapdragon 845, and a USB Type-C connector next to a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The only downside to all this is that it is highly unlikely the device will be sold in North America. vivo is a Chinese brand and, to date, has never sold a device in a North American country. It is possible that this device could be the first, but we wouldn’t bet on it.
What do you think? Are you excited about this phone’s design, or do you think it’s too chintzy? Let us know in the comments!