vivo NEX Dual Display

The Vivo NEX was Vivo’s first smartphone with a completely bezel-less screen, and to achieve the design goal, the Chinese smartphone brand had developed a pop-up module for the front-facing camera and a piezoelectric earpiece. However, as we all know it, sliding parts can get bad pretty fast. Also, a piezoelectric earpiece speaker isn’t as good as a regular speaker since the audio coming out from it is not as localized as a regular earpiece. In our Vivo NEX review, we had explained how the audio through the vibrating speaker wasn’t clear and other people could listen to what the caller has to say. To solve these problems, Vivo has thought about a new solution: a dual-screen smartphone. There’s a 6.6-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED screen at the front with a regular but thin earpiece, and there’s no camera or other sensors at the front. The screen also includes an in-display fingerprint reader, just like the Vivo NEX. However, the company is using a fifth-generation sensor, which can unlock the device in just 0.29 second. There’s a 5.5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED screen at the rear and it can be used whenever there’s a need to click selfies or make video calls. That’s a cool idea, isn’t it? The company hasn’t left out the 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can listen to music on your favorite earphones or headphones. It becomes harder to protect the phone, though, because there’s a secondary screen at the rear, it can’t be used with cases.

The Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition has three cameras at the rear: 12MP RGB sensor, 2MP depth sensor, and TOF camera. The 12MP camera uses a 1/2.55-inch RGB sensor with 1.4-micron pixels, f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilization, dual-pixel phase-detection autofocus and 4K video recording at 30fps. The 2MP camera is used as a depth sensor, and the information is used while capturing images in portrait mode (images with background blur effect). The 3D TOF (Time of Flight) camera sensor is where things start getting interesting. The 3D TOF module throws infrared light on the object or subject and then measures time after which the reflected rays reach back, thereby calculating the exact position and shape of the object and mapping it in 3D space. This information can be used to recreate objects or people in 3D space and use those resources in augmented reality or computational photography related scenarios. The 3D TOF camera projects 300,000 dots on the face to unlock the device in just 0.35 seconds. The camera setup is surrounded by a ‘Lunar Ring’ LED flash, which consists of 16 LEDs at the top half and the bottom half overlaps with the screen in which AMOLED screen’s pixels are used as a source of light. Vivo claims that the ring-shaped flash can spread light more evenly, thereby illuminating a face in a better way while capturing selfies.

The Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, and it is expected to feature 10GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS 2.1 internal storage. There’s no microSD card so storage space can’t be expanded. The Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition runs Android 9 Pie-based FuntouchOS 4.5 software. The phone also features Jovi AI voice assistant with a dedicated button on the left side of the device. The phone also features a dual-SIM card slot with 4G LTE connectivity, GPS (with A-GPS and GLONASS), 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 5.0, USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition also features a 4000mAh battery with 22.5W fast charging. The phone also uses an AK4377A 32-bit audio DAC from AKM for high-quality audio playback.