At a time when most Android manufacturers are adopting the unsightly notch in order to get as close to a truly bezel-less display as possible, there are a few renegades who’re concentrating on achieving the same goal without resorting to blatant imitation. Chinese smartphone manufacturer Vivo is one of the few who is making its own innovations rather than copying Apple and its latest flagship, the Vivo NEX (Rs. 44,990), is truly a breath of fresh air in the Android landscape. After almost nailing the in-display fingerprint scanner technology with the release of the Vivo X21, the company has now released the Vivo NEX – a truly bezel-less smartphone with a 91.2 percent screen-to-body ratio. Here, we’ll take a close look at Vivo’s latest flagship and find out if it truly is the smartphone of the future.

For the purpose of this review, we received the higher-end variant of the Vivo NEX with packs in 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Let’s take a look at the complete hardware specifications of the device before we dive into the review:

The Vivo NEX comes in a premium looking package with the regular bunch of accessories, including a pair of in-ear type earphones and a black soft-touch black case.

Here’s everything you’ll receive when you purchase a Vivo NEX:

Design and Build Quality

Starting off with the design, the Vivo NEX looks nothing like any smartphone that you’ve ever seen before (unless you’ve seen the Oppo Find X, of course). As mentioned earlier, the device does not feature the dreaded notch and has a rather seamless looking 6.59-inch Super AMOLED bezel-less display dominating the front of the device, featuring an in-display fingerprint scanner and a slight chin underneath. We received the black variant of the device which has a stunning psychedelic looking pattern that shimmers when light falls on it from different angles.

The top edge of the device houses the concealed front-facing camera along with the secondary noise-cancelling microphone and the 3.5mm headphone jack. The pop-up camera in itself is one of the biggest things that make this smartphone truly unique. Unlike most Android smartphone manufacturers out there, Vivo implemented an innovative design for the front facing camera to achieve the truly bezel-less display. The selfie camera is motorized and pops-up on its own whenever you open an app that utilizes the front facing camera and goes back inside the chassis as soon as you close the application.

In order to maximize the screen-to-body ratio, the proximity sensor has been hidden within the tiny top bezel and the ambient light sensor has been embedded within the display and, as mentioned earlier, the smartphone features an in-display fingerprint scanner. Vivo highlights that the third-generation in-display fingerprint scanner on the device is faster and more reliable than previous generations, and I completely agree with the company’s claims. Even though it’s not the fastest fingerprint scanner out there, it is quite a bit more responsive than the one found on the Vivo X21. Furthermore, the Vivo NEX lacks a physical earpiece and makes use of a piezo-electric system, which the company refers to as the glass-vibrating screen soundcasting technology, that converts the entire display into an audio source.

Getting back to the smartphone’s design, the right edge is home to the power button and the volume rocker, both of which have a very satisfying tactile feel. Since both of the buttons are placed on one side, however, reaching the volume rocker might pose some trouble when using the phone single handed.

Moving on to the most striking feature of the smartphone, its display. The Vivo NEX packs in a 6.59-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080×2316 which gives it an aspect ratio of 19.3:9. Quality-wise, the display is top notch (even without a notch) and the color reproduction is quite accurate, with bright vibrant colors and deep punchy blacks.

All-in-all, the Vivo NEX packs in a great display which looks absolutely stunning thanks to the bezel-less and notch-less implementation.

The Vivo NEX features a single downward firing speaker which gets pretty loud as compared to the OnePlus 6. The high quality sound output is amazing, with clear mids and highs alongside deep bass. While the placement of the speaker unit isn’t ideal, having a truly bezel-less display doesn’t leave a whole lot of options anyway.

Since we’re talking about speakers and audio output, let me also address Vivo’s glass-vibrating screen soundcasting technology which replaces the physical earpiece. Sound quality in calls is pretty bad and you have to place your ear in a specific position to hear the caller properly. I wish Vivo had invested more time and effort in this area because, after all, the device is primarily a phone and you’ll eventually need to make calls with it.

  • Rear Cameras

In keeping with the trends, the Vivo NEX sports a dual camera setup on the back with a 12 megapixel f/1.8 primary sensor and a 5 megapixel f/2.4 secondary sensor for depth perception. The primary lens features dual pixel phase detection auto focus and four-axis optical image stabilization, while the secondary lens features no stabilization and even lacks autofocus capabilities. The dual camera setup is complemented by a dual-tone LED flash.

Rear Cameras

Low light shots captured by the Vivo NEX are below average, resulting in blurry images with a lot of noise. Shots captured by the camera in low light are often out of focus.

Coming to the portrait mode, which utilizes the secondary 5 megapixel f/2.4 sensor. Portrait images captured in ample light turn out great with decent edge detection and detail, however, the camera really struggles capturing portrait images in low light conditions. When there isn’t enough light, the camera tends to slightly blur the subject as well, which results in a very poor image.

Front Camera

Talking about the pop-up 8 megapixel f/2.0 selfie camera, the images captured are just about average with limited dynamic range and they’re overexposed more often than not. While the images clicked by the selfie camera may not be the best, they’re decent enough for social media.

I really liked the monochrome background effect on the selfie camera which makes the background black and white, making the photos look pretty cool. All-in-all, the camera performance is just about okay, but considering the fact that the Vivo NEX is a flagship, I expected a lot more from the device in the camera department and quite honestly, I’m a tad bit disappointed.

Performance

Being a flagship, the Vivo NEX packs in the best hardware available in the smartphone market today. The device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC coupled with 8 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of internal storage. To begin with, let’s take a look at the benchmark scores which reveal that the Vivo NEX easily beats the OnePlus 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S9+ in AnTuTu, achieving a score of 286185.

Transitioning to the heavy skin that I’ve been talking about, the Vivo NEX runs Funtouch OS 4.0, a heavily skinned version of Android 8.1 Oreo which has been designed to look a lot like iOS 11. While at first I was a bit annoyed with the UI, I quickly got used to it and Vivo’s implementation of the navigation gestures (a direct rip-off of the ones found on the iPhone X) is frankly quite good and feels very seamless. Honestly, I liked the gesture implementation so much that switching back to my OnePlus 5 and its hardware buttons felt very unnatural.

The smartphone doesn’t feature a face unlock feature, like most other flagships out there, but in my opinion, leaving out face unlock on the device is a rather prudent move as opening the front camera again and again might take a toll on the camera mechanism and the battery as well

Battery

Vivo’s bezel-less flagship packs in an impressive 4,000mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support for fast charging. It’s quite unusual that Vivo stuck with Quick Charge 3.0, because the Snapdragon 845 chip on the device supports Quick Charge 4.0 which much faster than the previous generation. Nonetheless, the device charges fairly quickly using the included charging brick, taking about 45 minutes to go from 10 to 80 percent charge, which is quite impressive to say the least. In order to achieve such efficient fast charging, Vivo utilizes what it calls dual-engine quick charging, which might sound a bit gimmicky but it still is pretty effective.

Cons:

  • Bad low-light camera performance
  • Poor call audio quality
  • No IP rating or wireless charging
  • Quite heavy and large for one handed use

SEE ALSO: Asus ZenFone 5Z Review: Should You Buy Over OnePlus 6?

Well, that rounds up our review of the Vivo NEX which is a great flagship smartphone for the price. I personally really like the big, beautiful, bezel-less display, the amazing battery life and the exceptional performance. On top of that, the innovative pop-up selfie camera will definitely turn a few heads. To sum it all up, the Vivo NEX is definitely worth buying if you’re looking for an Android flagship that doesn’t blatantly copy Apple’s design (well, at least not on the hardware front) and offers great performance to boot.