Vivo managed to impress the tech world with the introduction of the world’s first smartphone with an in-display fingerprint sensor at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 held in January. While this fingerprint sensing technology was later launched in Vivo X20 Plus UD, the Chinese company has yet another technology up its sleeves that is set to take the in-display fingerprint sensor to the next level. At the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, Vivo showcased a concept phone that lets go of the limitation where users are bound to unlock the phone by touching only the marked fingerprint sensing area. Dubbed Apex, Vivo’s concept phone offers a much larger area, which is nearly equal to the half of the screen, to unlock by touching anywhere inside it.
Vivo’s Apex concept phone comes with ‘Half-Screen In-Display Fingerprint Scanning Technology’, as the company likes to call it, and offers a larger area where the users can place the finger instead of a confined area marked by the fingertip-sized icon. The scanning area in Vivo Apex is not quite the half of the screen size – it’s more like one-third, however, big enough to unlock with the fingerprint. This could be useful in cases where you lousily pick up the phone and unlock it without having to carefully place your finger on the icon, as seen on the Vivo X20 Plus UD. moreover, the fingerprint sensing area now takes up to two different fingerprint data if there are more than one users to keep the data extra secure.
The Vivo X20 Plus UD features a display that has been collaboratively built by Synaptics, however, the company hasn’t mentioned if this new sensing technology is developed by Synaptics as well. According to the journalists who managed to spend some time with this new technology say that it works similar to the fingerprint sensor seen on Vivo X20 Plus UD’s display, which is not as fast as the conventional phone unlocking including the physical fingerprint sensors.
Another big invention that Vivo has equipped the Apex concept phone with is the new selfie camera. In a first, the selfie camera on Apex has been redesigned to go with the new bezel-less design. The Apex comes as a device that justifies the word ‘bezel-less’ by all means – it features three bezel-less sides that have been subtly designed while the fourth side has a little extra bezel on the bottom.
In order to achieve this design factor, Vivo has made some really impressive adjustment by making the selfie camera disappear from the surface. Instead, Vivo has added the selfie camera module inside the top edge of the Apex phone that can be taken out when needed. Just like a periscope, this 8-megapixel camera is hidden most of the times, making the phone look like the ones we saw a couple of years ago that had no front cameras. The camera, however, comes with a downside that it takes around 8 seconds to pop up and get ready for photography – it makes a whirring sound while doing so. Despite this complex setup, the entire front camera module is sturdy and is probably one of the innovative workarounds to pack a bezel-less display without creating a ‘notch’, similar to the one seen on iPhone X that turned into unfunny Internet jokes.
Since the Vivo Apex concept phone has minimal bezels on the sides, there are no earpiece speakers on the phone – however, this doesn’t mean calls can’t be heard. Vivo has contemplated much of the workaround and came up with yet another impressive solution. The Vivo Apex concept phone will vibrate the entire display just like the speaker in tune with the voice coming from the other side so that it is audible. Xiaomi Mi MIX, however, works on the bone conduction technology where the audio is transmitted to the inner ear via bones in the ear.
Vivo said that Apex is just a concept phone and it has no plans to launch an actual product with such level of refinements. However, on the other hand, all the basic functionalities shown at the event by Vivo just worked fine with no doubt of holding this design back from the commercial launch. While Vivo may not have plans to launch this product anytime soon or to further work on the concept phone to make changes or improvements, this technology could as well be seen in some future phones.
