In the ongoing battle against the bezel, smartphone manufacturers have been investing in various design ideas to increase screen-to-body ratio. With the Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition the idea is – as you can probably guess from the product name – to use a second screen on the rear by the cameras, thus removing the need for a front-facing camera.
Vivo – a Chinese giant, under the arm of BBK Electronics, which also owns OnePlus and Oppo – has been a front-runner of Chinese phone design. From its pop-up camera concept phone – which rapidly materialised as a on-market product, the NEX S, a mater of months later – to being the first manufacturer to utilise an in-screen fingerprint scanner in the X20, it seems poised to take its brand beyond its Chinese and limited markets position.
As a 6.39-inch device, the Vivo NEX sits alongside the likes of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro in terms of scale. That it squeezes a 5.49-inch Full HD screen onto its rear, however, is unparalleled in the industry – even the Nubia X can't match that. It ought to make for easy-to-snap selfies.
The real benefit this brings is that there's no front-facing camera, thus no notch on the front, for a screen-to-body ratio that's similar to the Honor Magic 2 or Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, making for a very screen dominant device. Those other phones are based on a slider design, however, with Vivo opting for yet another alternative idea in the quest against the notch.
The NEX Dual Display isn't shy on the specifications front either, packing in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, paired with 10GB RAM, alongside a trio of rear cameras (one solely used for depth detection).
We'll be at the NEX Dual Display Edition launch, on 11 December 2018 in Shanghai, China, where we'll bring you more information and our first impressions of the device once we've seen it in the flesh. Right now there's no further word on price, release date or market availability.