The Vivo Nex delivers on the promise the Lenovo Z5 made: no notch and plenty of screen

The Nex, near bezel-less phone, has arrived today

Vivo may have finally given us the first phone that appears to be all-screen. While originally thought to be Lenovo with the first bezel-less phone, it appears that that was indeed just a bunch of bullshit and false marketing. When the Z5 did finally premier, it was nothing more than another Android phone with a deep notch and big chin. Clearly, the concept art and marketing materials were not indicative of the final design.

Lenovo Concept

Lenovo Z5 marketing poster

However, thanks to Vivo and the upcoming "Nex", we finally have a glimpse of what is capable in terms of bezel removal. The Nex is based on the Apex concept phone that was demoed earlier this year with its novel pop-up selfie cam. Rather than keep the camera on the front with a notch, Vivo is housing the front-camera internally with a pop-up mechanism presenting the camera when necessary. While the 8MP camera may be nothing as impressive as the cameras on major flagships, it does remove it from the screen and takes the notch with it.

The Nex features a pop-up selfie cam

Now, obviously the notch houses more than just the camera as it often houses various sensors as well as the front-facing speaker seen on many phones, but Vivo has an answer for that issue. The Nex will feature "screen soundcasting" as in the vibrations of the screen will produce the sounds rather than a front speaker. This means goodbye to the front grills featured on a phone such as a Pixel.

As you can see, the phone does feature a small chin housing internals such as the ribbon cable for the display as the folded-in OLED technology seen on the iPhone X is not present. The phone does, however, feature internals that we expect from a flagship including a Snapdragon 845, 6GB of RAM, a 4000mAh battery, and, yes, an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Is this the phone you will see dominating the Galaxies, iPhones, and Pixels? Well, of course not because it is a China-only phone. However, it does give a pretty clear picture of what can be achieved in the mobile atmosphere, and it shows that their are still ways to be creative in phone design. More importantly, it finally shows us what a true bezel-less phone could look like unlike the Z5 which made some big promises only to crush our spirits.