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You have to give it to Vivo for having a good go at breaking the mould of the same-old smartphones that have nothing different about them but a tweak here and a spec there. The Vivo NEX, based on a concept phone Vivo showcased earlier, comes with a lot of new stuff. Some of it works well and some has a way to go, but all in all, this innovative smartphone is still a great package because it packs some solid specs besides all the new stuff.
The very raison d’être of the NEX is its all-screen display. The borders or bezels are at the minimum possible, given today’s technology. The notch, being actively adopted by other Android phones after the iPhone debuted it, has gone. The earpiece has been banished in favour of a new method that uses bone conduction and turns the entire display into a speaker. And the front camera that would normally take up space on the top bezel has been replaced by a pop-up mechanism. So here’s how all these things work:
The big screen
With barely any edges, the screen of course looks gorgeous. There’s something especially compelling about pictures that just seem to float in the air and we love that look on our smartphones and televisions. And the Nex’s screen is just 0.01 inches short of a tablet because it’s 6.59 inches across. That just makes everything look prettier, except of course when an app doesn’t scale up to make use of that space, such as YouTube. The screen, it’s widely felt, should have had a higher resolution to it, but its 1080x2316 does the job.
Now you hear me
Some reviewers report muffled sound with the new bone conduction tech, but I found it clearer than most phones. You don’t have to hold the device a particular way to hear the other person, so even if you grab your ringing phone and it happens to be upside down, you’ll still hear loud and clear. I find myself excited about this feature, wondering how nice it would be if all phones could adopt it someday. Well, for now, it’s on a Vivo phone and sounds great. The speaker on the Nex is loud and clear but a little sharp at times.
Under the glass
The fingerprint sensor that’s normally on the back of most phones or on a home button has been moved under the display and uses an optical sensor to see your fingerprint. I had a lot of trouble with this feature. The sensor was obviously not able to see the lines on my finger because a good half hour of trying wouldn’t let it register the print. The sensor would report I moved too much (which I swear I did not) or that I removed the finger too quickly or something else, but it eventually didn’t work for me. I had to resort to using a pin to lock the phone because there’s no face unlock, there being no regular front camera. Others say it works for them but has a few glitches or is slow.
Pop up to shoot
The front camera, one of the most unusual aspects of this phone, pops up with a sci-fi sound when you want to take a selfie. The pop-up tray really does seem sturdy enough but everyone is worrying over what would happen if the phone fell from your hand just then, or over time when you’ve finished taking selfies for several years. I would worry over the former but dismiss the latter. As for the phone falling down — more than the camera pop-up, you’ve got to worry about the phone as it’s all-glass — so no point losing sleep over that. It would probably not be easy to repair, of course.
The bigger worry is that the front camera doesn’t really take great shots. They’re overexposed in so many light conditions and all that beautifying just ends in peculiar skin tones.
The primary 12 MP camera though is really rather nice, taking clear shots and doing a pretty good job in low light indoors as well. There’s both optical and electronic stabilisation, so you can expect to take pretty good videos.
The Nex comes with top notch specs. It has the Snapdragon 845 chip that’s used by flagships, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage on board. It’s a dual SIM phone and has a whopping huge battery of 5,000 mAh. Think of how long you can make that last. The phone is working on Android 8.1 and gives a really nice smooth performance on par with more expensive top-end phones.
But what is by far the most annoying thing about the Nex is Vivo’s interface. From the screen layout choices to the keyboard, to the settings to the preloaded apps, the lot needs simplification and de-cluttering. The settings in particular follow an unconventional format that is messy and seems to follow no particular order. Overall, it’s an interface that cries out for an overhaul.
The other annoyance is that fingerprints stick to the unusual back panel stubbornly. All glassy phones retain finger smudges, but on the Nex, they don’t disappear with a quick wipe. You’ll need a good soft cloth and some vigorous action to make it sparkle again. And that’s a pity because the back, although a dull grey-black, has a unique prismatic effect that shows rainbow colours when it catches strong light just so. I love that — as I do the Star Trek-like sound of the pop-up camera, I must confess.
Price: ₹44,990
Pros: Full seamless screen, large battery, top-end specs, good rear camera, interesting pop-up mechanism, reasonable price, great performance
Cons: Fingerprint sensor needs fine-tuning, front camera pics overexposed, interface very annoying, screen could be higher resolution
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