Our Vivo Nex analysis reveals why this lust-worthy accessory should abide an article of admiration rather than become the phone in your pocket.
I could watch this all day… #VivoNEX pic.twitter.com/UdAJK2u5xa
— Kris Carlon (@kriscarlon) June 21, 2018
The best allotment of the move to absolutely bezel-less phones is the awe-inspiring and absurd solutions to the catechism of area to put aggregate that acclimated to alive aloft and beneath the display. Front-facing cameras, fingerprint scanners, speakers and sensors all charge relocating if we’re activity to accept able full-screen phones.
The Vivo Nex valiantly addresses those necessities, in following of that notch-less and bezel-free ideal. It doesn’t accomplish on every front, and there are added than a few caveats you charge to be acquainted of afore you adjudge to acceptation one. As you ability accept guessed, owning a first-gen smartphone from the approaching – today – isn’t a pain-free experience. It’s a attractive and agitative phone, but sometimes window arcade is bigger than a arcade spree. That is why, ultimately, the Vivo Nex should allegedly abide an article of admiration rather than become the phone in your pocket.
Let’s alpha with what fabricated all the Nex’s architecture decisions necessary: the display. The Vivo Nex houses a massive 6.59-inch Abounding HD+ AMOLED console in a anatomy that’s alone a atom beyond than the 6-inch Pixel 2 XL. For a phone as big as this it’s decidedly manageable, with actual little bezel about the top three abandon and alone a baby button beneath the awning (1.71 mm on the sides, 2.16mm on top and 5mm beneath the display).
The affectation offers all the accepted OLED benefits, like abysmal blacks, affluent colors, and an always-on display. According to Vivo’s business actual it’s a Super AMOLED panel, but the aggregation wouldn’t affirm it was sourced from Samsung. However, Samsung afresh demoed an OLED console with the aforementioned audio discharge capabilities (more on this later) at Affectation Week.
Regardless, in ablaze sunlight the Vivo Nex awning didn’t get absolutely as ablaze as I’d like, authoritative alfresco afterimage no bigger than best phones. (For those interested, the ambient ablaze sensor lives beneath the 19.3:9 screen, area it peeps appropriate through the affectation at the center-top of the panel.) White antithesis is good, as is blush accurateness generally. A night ablaze access is accessible in the settings and you can acclimatize the blush temperature to clothing your dejected ablaze clarification needs.
Long adventure short: the Vivo Nex’s affectation is every bit as acceptable as you’d appetite an all-screen phone to be. Not anybody will be blessed with the Abounding HD+ resolution and about low pixel body (1,080 x 2,316 pixels and 338ppi), but it’ll serve best consumers altogether able-bodied — with ability accumulation to boot.
Accidental access touches were never an affair for me, clashing what David accomplished on the Acquisition X. The Nex has a hardly beyond button than the Acquisition X, but there’s boilerplate to draft your duke meat on either device. Fingerprints are a botheration as with best glass-backed phones, but the holographic laser carving does a abundant job confusing from the accumulated grease.
While the Xiaomi Mi Mix was the aboriginal to abolish the top and ancillary bezels afterwards abacus a notch, it did so by including a beyond bezel on the bottom, a dodgy piezoelectric earpiece speaker, and what ability be the dumbest area for a front-facing camera yet. About in acknowledgment to Xiaomi’s effort, Vivo shrinks the bezels alike further, uses under-glass beating for the earpiece speaker, and puts the front-facing camera central the anatomy of the phone, bustling up on command whenever the camera app switches to the front-facing viewfinder.
More than the awning and its absorbing 91.24 percent screen-to-body ratio, the Vivo Nex’s pop-up camera is arguably its bigger wow factor. Every time the Nex’s camera popped out from the phone, I was asked to “do it again” by whomever I was with. It elicits about baby expressions of admiration in anyone that sees it. It’s acutely air-conditioned and the change hasn’t beat off alike afterwards a brace of weeks.
The downside of such a chic allotment of tech is the simple actuality that abacus a affective allotment to a smartphone adds a bulk of risk. Because the abundance with which abounding of us bead our phones, there’s a acceptable affair about the camera breaking or the apparatus artlessly acid out over time. Vivo has aggregate backbone abstracts to abate those concerns, but for best bodies it will arise bottomward to a simple decision. You’re either adequate with the risks, or no bulk of assurances will accomplish you anticipate this is a acceptable idea.
It’s absurd to say aloof how abundant aftereffect the Nex’s camera apparatus has on the battery, but at atomic it has to be beneath than the Acquisition X. Oppo’s ascent camera apparatus elevates the absolute top of the phone and contains both the advanced and aback cameras. Its assurance on facial acceptance agency the cameras pop up every time you appetite to alleviate your phone. By comparison, the Vivo Nex’s selfie-only ability needs accept negligible, abnormally if you’re not awfully decumbent to selfies.
For anyone that about anytime uses their front-facing camera, the Nex offers an ideal solution: it’s there if you charge it and spares you the cruddy accommodation of a notch.
According to Vivo the camera bore can advance up to 500g in afresh trials, and it can allegedly can be aloft and bargain afresh up to 50,000 times and bear up to 45kg of advance force aback extended.
For what it’s annual I had absolutely no problems with the Nex’s adorning camera. The dust that accordingly accumulates on it didn’t absolutely abstruse the lens, so charwoman it wasn’t as all-important as you ability think.
It has additionally authentic to be added asperous than I was expecting, and I’ve been agilely asperous with it. The camera’s actual snugly fit. You can’t jerk it from ancillary to ancillary and affairs it upwards is fruitless. If you columnist bottomward on the camera while it’s out it springs aback bottomward afore demography the adumbration and abandoning itself fully.
While it’s still aboriginal days, I’m added assured this affair could handle some action scars afore you accept any problems with it. If you’re anxious about causing accident to the camera by bottomward it you allegedly accept added to abhorrence from breaking the affectation than the camera.
The baby bezels on the Nex’s affectation beggarly the earpiece apostle additionally had to be re-engineered. Rather application than a archetypal smartphone speaker, Vivo’s beating motor transmits complete through the absolute screen. That agency aback a alarm comes in you can abode your ear anywhere on the affectation to apprehend the added actuality (although arise the top area the beating motor is amid is best). It sounds abundant like any approved smartphone apostle and isn’t as aural to those abreast you, as I initially expected.
After a brace of weeks of application it, I can’t say I’ve begin it any worse than a accustomed earpiece speaker. Because the complete comes from beneath the awning itself, that’s a big win. Apprehend to see the aforementioned tech in added phones down the line.
The Vivo Nex additionally has a bottom-firing apostle that gets affluence loud and offers bigger bass than article like the Pixel 2. The bulk to which the affectation beating contributes to all-embracing audio affection is arguable, but it is acutely beneath shrilly at abounding aggregate than the Pixel, giving some believability to Vivo’s claims of “more able bass and softer, smoother treble.” I wouldn’t alarm alien audio the Vivo Nex’s best affairs point, but it fares no worse than the competition, accomplishing commensurable after-effects through some absorbing technology with added allowances than aloof sound.
There’s a set of appropriate arranged earbuds in the box, but the Vivo Nex has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can aloof use what you’ve got. The V1 dent and congenital DAC agency you’ll get abundant audio out of a acceptable brace of active headphones.
Like a lot of added things we’ve arise to apprehend on a phone, you won’t acquisition a arresting fingerprint scanner anywhere on the Vivo Nex either. The company partnered with Goodix to accommodate an under-glass scanner, so you can alleviate your phone with your fingerprint through the display. It hasn’t gotten old, alike afterwards spending a while with this phone.
Interestingly, a contempo teardown arise it’s absolutely a camera accomplishing the scanning through a breach in the display, not an accelerated solution. While Vivo had been alive with Synaptics aback we aboriginal saw this tech at CES, the scanner on the Nex is fabricated by the aforementioned aggregation that food Huawei and Xiaomi with in-display fingerprint scanners. This agency that the sensor isn’t arresting at any angle, clashing antecedent Synaptics scanners and alike the Vivo X20 UD.
The Vivo Nex’s fingerprint clairvoyant is not as fast as a capacitive scanner and yes, it occasionally freaks out and fails to apprehend your book at all, but I’m accommodating to cut it some slack. In-display tech will advance in time, and alone those accommodating to put up with it as is would be brash to aces up a Nex, anyway. It unlocks about instantly in the appropriate conditions, but in beneath than ideal situations, the alleviate action ability beam three times afore it assuredly unlocks or fails in the attempt.
If you charge your phone apart in a burning every distinct time, the Nex is not for you. Accustomed the abundance with which we alleviate our phones, this could understandably accomplish or breach your experience. Abundant like the cleft or the HTC U12 Plus’ capacitive ability and aggregate buttons, it’s either article you feel acerb about or will bound acclimate to. Personally, I didn’t apperception the delays or the abortion to alleviate much, but your breadth may alter depending on how abrupt you are.
When the fingerprint logo is arresting on awning the camera is active; aback it’s not arresting it’s inactive, acceptation no unlocking. If your phone is lying on a table, you’ll accept to accord it a nudge to actuate the fingerprint camera or hit the ability button. It’s additionally activated by movement, so acrimonious up your phone activates the scanner camera automatically. You can about-face off the fingerprint logo on the always-on affectation in the settings, but if you do so you’re additionally disabling the camera, authoritative unlocking your phone from a screen-off accompaniment impossible.
Bright ambient ablaze can additionally annual issues for the fingerprint scanner, as it uses beam from the awning to get a abundantly contrasty angel of your fingerprint. In these cases, the Nex avalanche aback on a lock awning PIN. The Nex scanner works with cyberbanking apps and payments aural WeChat and AliPay, aloof don’t apprehend it to assignment with abounding banks alfresco of China.
For all the adorned new tech the Nex includes, there are drawbacks. The under-glass fingerprint scanner is not as fast or reliable as accepted capacitive scanners. The front-facing camera raises authentic apropos about backbone alike if it does abate aloofness apropos by actuality hidden best of the time. Shoving sensors into the bezel like the adjacency sensor or beneath the awning like the ambient ablaze sensor or feel scanner accomplish the affectation added big-ticket to manufacture. The Vivo Nex is a acid bend but awry accessory that tries to do a lot of amazing things and accordingly can’t do them all perfectly.
So far, though, aggregate the Nex fails to do is arguably fabricated up for in arduous coolness. There’s no abstinent that it is it an agitative phone to use.
When I talked about window arcade beforehand I was apropos to the abstraction that while it may be fun to animalism afterwards aerodrome fashion, should you anytime get the adventitious to abrasion some you’d acceptable acquisition it afflictive and impractical.
This sums up the Nex altogether for me.
It is about angrily cool. It’s additionally not the smartphone you and I badly appetite it to be. The Nex was fabricated for China, not the Western market. It’s adamantine to get in the West and alike harder to accord with Vivo’s FunTouch OS.
To alarm FunTouch an abhorrence would be unfair. It is app drawer-less and heavily iOS-inspired. That ability accomplish Android admirers in the West cringe, but it’s advised a affairs point in Asia. You can’t aloof install a altered launcher, either. Despite actuality able to change the absence launcher in the Settings, the Nex automatically defaults aback to the FunTouch Launcher whenever you hit the home button.
Even application Greenify to hide Vivo’s launcher isn’t a simple solution. Alike application Greenify to hide Vivo’s app drawer-less launcher isn’t a simple solution. To admission the all-important permissions Greenify needs, you charge accept a Vivo annual – article alone accessible with a authentic Chinese phone number.
Likewise, some of the interface is alone in Chinese and there are some formatting issues with Latin characters like ample spaces amid apostrophes and the “s” that follows them. The Jovi basic assistant, for which there is a committed accouterments button, alone works with the Chinese accent and with Chinese services, authoritative it abundantly abortive to Western audiences.
There are a lot of pre-installed Chinese apps best Westerners would instantly remove, and there’s no Google Play Store or Google apps out of the box. These can be force-installed but alike afresh you’ll accept issues downloading appealing accepted apps from Google. You’ll additionally appointment problems accepting advance notifications to arise through properly. Likewise, the always-on affectation shows notification icons, but alone for a actual bound cardinal of Vivo apps. There’s additionally no way to bound admission the settings unless you accept the app figure on the home screen, with no adjustment in the notification adumbration and command centermost or quick settings. I could go on but I’m abiding you get the point.
The FunTouch acquaintance is absolutely mitigated by an compassionate of the Nex’s ambition market, but the Vivo Nex is not a phone you absolutely appetite in your abridged unless you alive in China. If Vivo ends up absolution a all-around assemblage that may able-bodied change — it’s accessible accustomed the company’s advocacy of a antic accident as all-around as the Apple Cup. For that to arise though, Vivo would charge a European or American barrage plan and agreements with Google and (hopefully) carriers. But for now, I wouldn’t admonish anyone alfresco China to try affairs one unless you accept an abnormally aerial altruism for inconvenience, incompatibility, and inconsistency. If you absolutely appetite a Nex, you can acceptation one for a little over $800.
Ignoring the account of the software, the Vivo Nex lacks actual little on the accouterments front. The Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, Android 8.1 Oreo and a 4,000mAh array with fast active charging should accumulate all but the best acute specs hounds happy. There’s no microSD expansion, NFC, or wireless charging. Nor is there an IP appraisement which has become added important as a accepted flagship feature.
I never begin myself in charge of added ability or anamnesis while application the Nex, but at this date of the specs bold stutters and lag are appealing attenuate in the Android world. If benchmarks are your thing, the Nex performs actual well, announcement about 290K in AnTuTu, able-bodied aloft the Galaxy S9, OnePlus 6 and Xiaomi BlackShark. It additionally ranks actual able-bodied in Geekbench 4, Vellamo and 3D Mark benchmarks. The Nex’s achievement problems lie added in appropriate software behavior than in a abridgement of power.
Out of the box, aeronautics is handled via bash gestures from the basal of the screen. You can abolish all beheld clues or use a dot or bandage to admonish you of the bash targets. On-screen aeronautics buttons can be added and, whether you opt for gestures or basic buttons, you can adapt the adjustment to your liking.
In befitting with the all-screen experience, I autonomous for gestures and they were accessible abundant to get acclimated to. Accessing contempo apps is accomplished by annexation up and authority as the third action (after aback and home) is to accompany up the Nex’s iOS-like command center. Alike with the Google app and Abettor installed, there’s no way to admission it with a continued columnist of the home button and Oreo’s quick app switching is not accessible either.
Battery activity is addition affair entirely. Despite its absorbing 4,000mAh cell, array activity is not the Nex’s able point (at atomic on the analysis assemblage I best up). Vivo’s software doesn’t address screen-on time but I can acquaint you that alike on canicule of what I accede actual ablaze usage, the Nex still bald charging every day.
This could accept article to do with actuality a Chinese assemblage in Europe, but I’ve not accomplished such accelerated array cesspool on a non-international analysis assemblage in contempo memory. Heavy acceptance canicule appropriate a top up in the backward afternoon, article I’d never dream of on addition 4,000mAh device, like the Huawei P20 Pro.
The Nex accustomed several software updates during the two weeks I had it, so it’s not absurd to accept array activity could advance rapidly. The Nex ships with Vivo’s 22.5W fast charging band-aid which will top up your phone in abbreviate adjustment aback required.
Stay acquainted for our abounding Vivo Nex array analysis advancing up anon for more.
Perhaps the bigger abruptness for me was the affection of the Vivo Nex camera. It’s not necessarily bigger than the Pixel 2, but as you ability accept seen, it’s a appealing abutting race. The Nex camera tends to overexpose best shots and over-saturate colors, with a bit too abundant cutting beneath scrutiny.
Whether you like this access is absolutely up to your claimed tastes. I tend to bang colors and adverse while alteration my photos anyway, and I don’t apperception a little cutting if it makes my photos attending bigger on my phone and aback I allotment them to friends. If you adopt added sedate colors, can’t angle the over-sharpened HDR after-effects that are accepted to the new brand of AI cameras, or adjudicator a photo by how it looks at 100 percent crop, you allegedly won’t like the Nex’s camera as abundant as I do.
It’s either article that saves time or adds exceptionable and impossible-to-remove “enhancements.”
Then there’s the AI camera features. Like basically every added smartphone aggregation appropriate now, Vivo has arranged the Nex with “AI” camera features, from AI adorableness access and AI arena detection, to AI HDR and AI Filters. How abundant AI goes into anniversary of these actualization — and how advantageous they are — is up for debate, but on added phones with AI cameras (like the P20 Pro), the AI is primarily acclimated to ascertain scenes and automatically enhance the photo based on what it recognizes, usually by bumping the assimilation and cutting the result. The Vivo Nex does this by default.
The “AI” in the Nex camera seems abundantly relegated to adored clarify suggestions. Again, the P20 Pro lets you attenuate AI or use it to do what the Nex does by default, afterwards the advantage to about-face it off. So rather than an on/off state, you get an “on and even-more-on” situation. While I don’t decidedly apperception this myself, it could be make-or-break for some smartphone photographers.
The capital cameras on the Nex are a 12MP f/1.8 sensor with 1.4-micron pixels and a 5MP f/2.4 lens with both optical angel stabilization (OIS) and cyberbanking angel stabilization (EIS). Despite the Nex not implementing the de facto accepted camera adjustment of two quick presses of the ability button, you can accredit the aforementioned adjustment to a long-press of the aggregate bottomward button. It’s not as fast but it gets you the aforementioned result. Fortunately, the bang lag I noticed while in China was bound with one of the updates the Nex has accustomed in the aftermost two weeks.
The camera app is appealing accepted fare. Swipes booty you to altered cutting modes like AR stickers, panorama, chiral mode, face beauty, and 30fps video at 4K resolution, as able-bodied as 1080p slow-motion at 240fps. Time-lapses are additionally accessible on the Nex and video is stabilized, although it doesn’t arise out as bland as the P20 Pro’s AI stabilization or EIS on the Pixel 2.
There are some curiosities to the camera app. If you accept HDR set to auto and you about-face on account mode, it’ll attenuate HDR, as you would expect, but already you leave account access HDR stays off. The aforementioned goes for alive photos. If you’re in either access and about-face HDR aback on, account or alive furnishings are instantly disabled.
Portrait access supports from 16 to 0.95 aperture, but the after-effects at added apish apertures are as unrealistic as you ability apprehend (the ping pong table in the arcade beneath includes a accustomed shot, a f/16 shot, and a f/0.95 shot. You can acutely see the issues with the agent and the artificiality of the blur).
Even with the AI filters disabled, the Nex unnaturally bumps assimilation in mural shots. Over-saturation notwithstanding, blush reproduction on the Vivo Nex is acutely accurate. In the catchy photo beneath of assorted pigments, the photo is about atom on barring the action of the chicken which is brighter than in reality. The red, orange and blooming pigments, as alien as they arise in the photo, are absolutely that ablaze in absolute life.
In low ablaze the Nex holds up absolutely well, befitting babble to a bald minimum (and outperforming the Pixel 2 in my testing), but it loses astute detail with post-processing. Activating ambit is appropriate but isn’t as acceptable as article like the Pixel, with the Nex disturbing with the lighter genitalia of the shot. The Nex handles detail in atramentous areas actual well, generally alike bigger than the Pixel 2, but already afresh tends to over-expose and draft out the highlights. It’s a simple abundant assignment to jump into chiral access to change the acknowledgment settings, but as we all know, this is a footfall best users will not take.
I asked Vivo about Super HDR, which was appear afore the Nex’s launch, but that isn’t (yet) present on the device. The aggregation beneath to affirm if Super HDR would be added to the Nex’s repertoire via a software amend or if it lacks all-important hardware. Vivo said the Nex’s AI HDR is “based on” the company’s analysis into HDR technology and captures “more frames of a added activating ambit (11eV) than ahead possible.” Alike afterwards Super HDR, if Vivo modifies the Nex’s absence acknowledgment ambience a bit, the aggregation could accept a actual aggressive camera on its hands.
The front-facing camera is an 8MP f/2.0 ballista alms the accepted bokeh account mode, which suffers from the aforementioned issues with cutouts and fake-looking after-effects as best phones. It supports HDR, filters, adorableness mode, alive photos, and a array of altered aspect ratios including 4:3, 16:9, 19.3:9 and 1:1.
Unfortunately, the front-facing camera produces conspicuously bendable after-effects that abridgement detail and able exposure. It’s a abashment Vivo didn’t put the aforementioned accomplishment into angel processing for selfies as it does for the rear-facing cameras, abnormally because how big of accord the Nex’s camera apparatus is.
When all is said and done, the Vivo Nex is a glimpse of the future. It’s an aggressive artefact that in abounding means still acts and feels like a abstraction device. For all its shortcomings, I aboveboard acclaim Vivo for alike adventuresome to aftermath a phone like this for the accumulation market. That said, it’s allegedly for the best that it won’t accomplish it to Western markets. It’s an infuriatingly amiss but acutely adorable phone.
Despite its appearance, the Vivo Nex is still a phone like any other. Its affectation is great, the (main) camera is decidedly good, achievement is outstanding, audio is fine, the fingerprint scanner needs work, the software is atrocious, and the array isn’t great. In short, it’s a lot like best phones accessible today. Vivo hasn’t apparent a smartphone botheration as abundant as it has aloof transferred absolute smartphone problems into a added affected anatomy factor.
The Vivo Nex is the best agitative phone I’ve apparent in years. I’ve enjoyed application it, enjoyed the reactions I’ve gotten from those I’ve apparent it to, and alike enjoyed grappling with its shortcomings. It has fabricated the smartphone acquaintance fun and agitative again, but it’s as abounding with annoyance and abruptness as my ancient Android memories.
Compared to the able and apathetic phones we’re currently amidst by, the Nex is a animation of beginning air. It’s a way-marker on the adamant advance to absolutely bezel-free phones, alike if it is abominably executed. Hopefully it will serve as a blaring alarm for the phones that arise afterwards it.
| Pros: | Cons: |
|
|
| Vivo Nex | |
|---|---|
| Display | 6.59-inch Super AMOLED, Abounding HD+ (2316 x 1080, 338ppi), 19.3:9 aspect ratio |
| SoC | Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with AI Engine, 64-bit, octa-core, 10nm |
| GPU | Adreno 630 |
| RAM | 8GB |
| Storage | 256GB |
| Cameras | Rear: Dual pixel 12 MP f/1.8 (Sony IMX363) with 1.4µm pixel size, OIS and EIS + 5MP f/2.4 Front: 8MP, f/2.0 with adorning mechanism |
| Audio | 32-bit/192kHz audio, 3.5mm audio jack |
| Battery | 4,000 mAh, fast charging |
| IP rating | No |
| Sensors | Fingerprint (3rd bearing in-display), accelerometer, proximity, compass, gyroscope, infrared, ambient light |
| Network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 CDMA 800 & TD-SCDMA HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 LTE bandage 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 5(850), 8(900), 34(2000), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500) |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4G/5.1G/5.8G, hotspot Bluetooth 5.0 A-GPS microUSB 2.0 3.5mm headphone port USB Type-C |
| SIM | Dual SIM/hybrid slot |
| Software | Android 8.1 Oreo Funtouch OS 4 |
| Dimensions and weight | 162 x 77 x 7.98mm 199g |
| Colors | Black, Red |
Display
Design
Audio
In-display fingerprint scanner
Software
Performance & Hardware
Battery
Camera
Specs
Gallery
Final thoughts
The Nex's pop-up camera is arguably the bigger wow agency in a phone jam arranged with them, but abacus a affective allotment to a smartphone is a advancing decision.
Vivo has put the fingerprint scanner beneath the affectation bottle on the Nex and angry the awning itself into an earpiece speaker.
The in-display fingerprint scanner is slower and beneath reliable than accepted capacitive sensors.
The Vivo Nex is a acid bend but awry accessory that tries to do a lot of amazing things and accordingly can't do them all perfectly.
Vivo's FunTouch OS is app drawer-less and heavily iOS-inspired.
As it stands, the Vivo Nex is not a phone you absolutely appetite in your abridged unless you alive in China.
When it comes to specs there's actual little defective in the Vivo Nex, barring an IP rating, wireless charging, microSD amplification and NFC.
The affection of the Nex's camera was a nice surprise, although it does tend to over-expose, over-saturate and over-sharpen.
For a phone that makes the front-facing camera accouterments as big of a accord as the Nex does, it produces bendable results.
Vivo hasn't apparent a smartphone botheration as abundant as it has aloof transferred absolute problems into a added affected anatomy factor.
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