If you are into big displays, hate the notch, view a lot of video content and don’t take a lot of selfies, then the Vivo NEX is definitely for you.
Kshitij Pujari 19 July, 2018 14:47 IST
Vivo is generally not a brand one would associate with premium flagship level phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S9 or the Google Pixel 2 or the iPhone X. In the Indian market, Vivo and its sibling Oppo have mostly been in involved with mid-range smartphones which are more often than not selfie-centric and quite overzealous when it comes to image post-processing.
Which is why when it was Vivo who came out with the biggest innovation at MWC this year, I was a little taken aback. The APEX smartphone concept was unlike anything anyone had ever seen and more importantly while everyone was boarding the notch-express, Vivo decided to do something new. It has been released officially as the Vivo NEX for the Indian market and it will be selling from 21 July for Rs 44,990 on Amazon.
The phone has a near bezel-less display with a very minute chin at the bottom. No top bezel. Where did the front-facing camera and earpiece go you might wonder? That is where the innovation comes in. A small mechanical slider concealed at the top of the phone pops up to reveal the front-facing camera.
The device has already been announced in the Chinese market in two variants, the NEX S and NEX A. While the NEX S is the powerful Snapdragon 845 version with the in-display fingerprint sensor, the NEX A comes with the newly launched, but slightly underpowered Snapdragon 710 SoC and a fingerprint sensor at the back. In India, Vivo has seen fit to launch only its flagship NEX S at a price of Rs 44,990 making it a direct competitor to the Galaxy S9, Pixel 2, Oppo Find X and also the OnePlus 6.
Does Vivo NEX make for a worthy competition? Not really.
Why? Let’s find out.
Build and Design: 8/10
The Vivo NEX is very premium looking flagship without a doubt. The incredible screen-to-body ratio aside, the phone’s back is made of a curved glass and surprisingly isn’t slippery like, say the OnePlus 6. When viewed at different angles there appears to be a rainbow-like reflection at the back which only adds to the phone’s panache. At the top left side of the phone, we see a dual-camera setup and along with a flash. The finishing on the back has a classy feel to it and for such a shiny surface it surprisingly does not catch fingerprints easily.
The front side of the phone is something of a spectacle. I was greeted by a gigantic screen with next to no bezels save for a very tiny one at the bottom. Also present at the bottom was the type-C port, along with the speaker and dual-SIM card tray. The top is where the real eye-catching feature lies. The front-camera, as mentioned before, is quite cleverly concealed inside the device and you would not notice at all until it pops out from the top. More on that later.
The phone’s top also consists of the 3.5 mm headphone whose positioning I positively hated. But apart from this small anomaly, the phone appears to be as premium as it gets, which is something I have to applaud Vivo for. If you are looking for a device that might get you some Oooh’s in public, then Vivo NEX is definitely the one.
Features: 8.5/10
In line with all the premium flagships of this year, the Vivo NEX also offers some of the best hardware possible on a smartphone. We have the Snapdragon 845 SoC along with the Adreno 630 GPU. The variant we were given to review had 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage. There is no external SD card to upgrade the storage, but you will most probably not require it.
The phone, like the Vivo X21 UD before it, also has the in-display fingerprint sensor in it. Vivo has said that this NEX has an improved version of the sensor than the one which was in the Vivo X21. I have some reservations about this technology, but we shall get into that in some time. On the left-hand side, we see a customised button for launching the Google Assistant. It also doubles up to fire the Google Lens app when you long press it. However, unlike the HTC U12, this button cannot be customised to open anything else.
In the optics department, we see that the phone has a dual-camera setup at the back with a 12 MP primary sensor having a f/1.8 aperture with a 1.4µm size, dual pixel PDAF and 4-axis OIS. The secondary camera has a 5 MP sensor with a f/2.4 aperture and whose only function is for depth-sensing to achieve the bokeh effect. On the front, we have the pop-up selfie camera with an 8 MP sensor. We shall talk about this feature in greater detail in the camera section.
The Vivo NEX has a gigantic 6.6-inch AMOLED display on a body that is more or less the same size as the OnePlus 6. The lack of a top-bezel also means that there is no earpiece, which is why Vivo has made the entire screen as an earpiece using the earlier mentioned “screen sound casting technology,”. Anywhere you put your ear on the screen you will hear the same quality sound as on a regular earpiece. Kudos to Vivo for perfecting this technology, as Xiaomi had failed quite spectacularly with it on the Mi Mix 2 while using this same technique.
As far as connectivity options go, the phone checks all the basic requirements, such as dual-SIM 4G VoLTE capabilities, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot and USB 2.0 type-C port with fast charging. There is no FM or NFC. The entire setup is powered by a 4,000 mAh battery.
In the software department, the phone runs on the latest Android 8.1 Oreo with Vivo’s Funtouch OS 4.0 overlaying it.
Display: 8/10
The phone offers an unprecedented screen-to-body ratio of 91.24 percent which was only recently bested by the Oppo Find X. That being said, even though the tiny bezels fit the display in the footprint of OnePlus 6, the phone is a nightmare for one-handed use. There is no way on earth my finger would reach the top to pull down the notifications until I used by second hand. This, I think, is the biggest limitation of a gigantic display such as the one in the NEX.
However, the too-tall-for-one-hand anomaly aside, the NEX has a beautiful FHD+ display which is colourful, punchy and vibrant. At its price point, I would’ve preferred a 2K display on the phone, but it would seem that Vivo’s implementation of Samsung’s OLED panel is impressive enough to not warrant extra resolution.
Reading on the phone is an absolute joy due to its enormous size. The screen gets sufficiently bright in any kind of lighting condition and also very dim in the night time. While comparing the device’s display to the OnePlus 6, I found that there is no visible difference in the colour, white balance or saturation. However, both the Pixel 2 and S9 screens looked to be a shade better due to their 2K display.
The Vivo NEX offers a very unique 19.3:9 aspect ratio display which had made it hard to optimise the display for all apps. Before the FunTouch 1.4.14 update, there was a strange white bar that appeared below while viewing videos on YouTube, Netflix or Prime Video. The new update has resolved this and stretches the display to the very ends of the screen and with thankfully no notch in the way, the NEX gives a very cinematic viewing experience. That being said expect the video to be slightly cut from all sides to fit it fully in the 19.3:9 aspect ratio.
The in-display fingerprint conundrum
At first, I was quite fascinated by the idea of an in-display fingerprint reader. But as soon as I used it, I realised that the technology was far from being perfect. Coming off from using a OnePlus 6, I expected that the NEX fingerprint sensor would also be quite fast and responsive. I was, to put it lightly, quite unimpressed.
The first problem is registering the fingerprint. My initial attempt took me close to 15 minutes for getting my print registered. After that, I was met with several more restrictions. In bright sunlight, I had to literally squint and search for the fingerprint symbol on the screen. Even when I found it, the sensor took 3-4 attempts for authentication.
The problem is that you have to place your finger at the exact spot which is highlighted. Slight deviation means that the phone will not recognise your fingerprint. Since there are no physical grooves for guiding your finger, you have to guesstimate where the fingerprint sensor is.
Non-plussed by this unexpected behaviour of the sensor, I deleted my registered fingerprint and again went through with the arduous process of registering. The problem still persisted.
However, as I’m writing the review, the new FunTouch 1.4.14 update has made improvements to the technology making it somewhat easier to register fingerprints and also improving the fingerprint recognition. But in my opinion, it still needs fine-tuning. In any case, I hope that in the future Vivo will introduce updates to increase the accuracy of the sensor or make a device with a very wide area to recognise fingerprints. On the upside, the animation while the phone unlocks is quite cool, so points to Vivo for that.
Software: 7.5/10
I’m not a fan of custom UI skins on top of Android OS. I didn’t like it with Samsung Experience nor with HTC Sense and certainly not with Xiaomi’s MIUI. Vivo’s custom UI FunTouch is no different. Though the phone runs on the latest Android 8.1 Oreo it feels more like the phone has a cheap remake of iOS on it.
For a phone which remained adamant not to copy the iPhone X notch, the similarities between iOS and Funtouch are quite remarkable. No app drawer. Swipe left for seeing all your apps. Swipe from the bottom for quick settings. Swipe from the top to see notifications. Horizontally aligned recent apps. All very reminiscent of iOS.
There are on-screen navigation buttons which can be swapped for a gesture-based navigation. Again here we see the intense similarity between the iPhone X gestures and the Vivo NEX. Swipe up from right to see quick settings, from the center to go back home, from the left to go to the previous screen and hold the swipe up from the center to enter recent apps. However, I have to say that the gesture navigation on the NEX is much more responsive and refined than the OnePlus 6 and after a time I became quite accustomed to the swipe gestures.
However, OnePlus’ Oxygen OS is closest to stock Android which, in my book, gives OnePlus the upper hand over Vivo. Also, as it so happens Android P beta has revealed improved gesture-based navigation in its third beta and that should more or less give the Vivo NEX like gesture interface on all Android smartphones with Android P.
Even so, the FunTouch 1.4.14 update has polished the software experience of the phone with better and more responsive UI. It is by no means perfect, but as far UIs go FunTouch is bearable enough to live with. The choice, of course, comes down to the user’s preference.
Performance: 8/10
No surprises that the Vivo NEX aced all the performance charts with the utmost ease.
