In February 2018, China’s Vivo was one of the first companies to show a phone that’s literally all screen on the front — no notches for the selfie camera, thin bezels all around.
Now, the company has launched a successor to that phone, called the Vivo Apex 2019 — and it takes the same concept to its logical conclusion.
Vivo actually soft-launched the Apex 2019 in January, but the company has now brought the actual device to an event in Hong Kong (via The Verge).
Vivo’s Apex 2019 has no physical buttons, which have been replaced by pressure sensors which give haptic feedback when you touch them. The standard USB port has been removed and replaced with a Magport: a magnetic connector that clings to the back of the phone to charge it. There’s no SIM card slot — you have to use an eSIM instead. The phone’s screen doesn’t have a notch, and it has a new kind of fingerprint scanner, which lets you unlock the phone by placing a finger anywhere on the screen instead of a designated spot. There’s no speaker grille, either: The sound is delivered by vibrating the screen, a technology used in the original Apex phone as well. Read more…
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