This wicked concept phone solves all of iPhone X's problems
Vivo, the company that brought us the world's first phone with an under-the-screen fingerprint scanner, now has a concept phone that makes the bezels a thing of the past.
Called the Apex FullView, the phone has three innovative features. First, it has something Vivo calls the "Half-Screen In-Display Fingerprint Scanning Technology," meaning that the entire bottom portion of the screen doubles as a fingerprint scanner. Second, its entire display also doubles as a speaker (a company called Redux, recently purchased by Google, showcased similar tech last year at the MWC). And finally, its selfie camera rises from the top of the phone when needed and retracts when not in use.
All of these three combined mean that the front face of the phone is, essentially, all-screen -- no notch, no anything.
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Effectively, while the bezels on the Vivo Apex FullView aren't non-existent, they are really, really thin: 1.8mm on top and on the sides, and 4.3mm on the bottom. Vivo thinks that, with time, it could also reduce the bottom bezel to 1.8mm, which would give the phone an insane 98% screen-to-body ratio.
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UPDATE: Feb. 26, 2018, 3:17 p.m. CET After some hands-on time with the Vivo Apex, I'm impressed. The selfie camera appears and retracts very fast, the phone's screen is absolutely gorgeous, and the screen-speaker thingy works as advertised. The jury's still out on the fingerprint scanner, which didn't work very well even for Vivo's reps.
The Apex is just a concept phone at this stage, so don't expect to see it in stores now -- or ever. But seeing all this new tech crammed into a single device means it won't be long until we see a production phone that's actually all-screen (that's what we all want, right?).
Related Video: Hands-on with Samsung's Galaxy S9 and S9+
Topics Mobile World Congress
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
