Vivo is known for showing off some ambitious smartphone concepts at trade shows and you can bet that it will have a thing or two to showcase at MWC 2019 next month. It has revealed the Vivo Apex 2019. This is a successor to last year’s Apex concept which had a pop-up selfie camera which later appeared on the Vivo Nex. The Apex 2019 takes things up a notch with 5G and a “full display” fingerprint sensor.
Vivo will likely not be shipping the device in the form that it has been shown off today. However, some of the tech might make it into another device. That’s what it did with the pop-up selfie camera shown last year.
The Apex 2019 goes for the seamless design look like the Meizu Zero and ditches all buttons, ports, and openings. It has a “Super Unibody” curved glass design which prioritizes the screen-to-body ratio. This is Vivo’s first 5G smartphone and it will make use of the X50 5G modem from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 855 coupled with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage are also under the hood.
No further technical details have been provided by Vivo at this point, including for the dual camera setup at the back. There doesn’t appear to be a selfie camera in this concept, not even the pop-up one we saw on last year’s concept. Vivo wants people to focus on other innovations such as “full-display fingeprint scanning.” This should, at least in theory, let you unlock the device by essentially placing your finger anywhere on the display. Whether or not it actually works like that remains to be see.
Some of this tech will eventually trickle down on Vivo handsets due later this year. It will be interesting to see this concept in the flesh at MWC 2019 nonetheless.