Vivo’s Apex 2020 concept phone hides a camera under a wrap-around display
The latest phone you can’t buy from the Chinese phone maker comes with 60W wireless charging and has no ports or physical buttons
For three years now, Vivo has been trying to hide the selfie camera.
Under-display cameras aren’t a new concept: Samsung, Xiaomi and Vivo’s sister company Oppo are all working on it. But in 2020, we still can’t buy a phone with this feature. The reason? It’s really hard to make it work.
With this new concept phone, Vivo is also bringing back some old ideas and expanding on them.
Just like last year’s Apex, the new phone has no ports or physical buttons. But this time around, Vivo has decided to take advantage of that by spreading the screen around the sides, resulting in what it calls a “120° FullView Edgeless Display.”
And while last year’s device replaces the charging port with a magnetic charging wire that sticks to the back of the phone, the Apex 2020 is equipped with 60W wireless charging -- much faster than what’s offered by most existing phones. Vivo says it can juice up an empty 2,000 mAh battery in 20 minutes.
Another new feature on the Apex 2020 is a 6.2mm-thick continuous optical zoom system. According to Vivo, two of the phone’s four groups of lenses can move so that you can zoom at a continuous range between 5x and 7.5x with real-time autofocus. The main camera is also attached to a gimbal-like structure that Vivo says will help you take more stable videos.
If you’re interested, though, know that the Apex 2020 is still a concept device. But Vivo product general manager Harry Hong did promise that the company “will continue to put Apex’s innovative technologies into practice.”
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