Vivo made waves at CES at the start of the year by partnering with Synaptics to show off an in-glass fingerprint sensor is like. At Mobile World Congress, the Chinese company is looking to steal the show again with a new concept phone.
Calling it the Apex, this almost bezel-less phone houses what the company describing as a “half-screen in-display fingerprint scanning technology.” But unlike the name, it doesn’t cover half of the screen entirely. It takes up a third of the screen, which is still expansive enough and placed in an area that’s easily reachable by the thumb. There’s also said to be an extra layer of security with the option of being able to input two different fingerprints to unlock the screen.
Now with a phone that gives up it bezels, what then is going to happen to other key sensors usually seen on the front of the device? A big one to think about is the front-facing camera? Where does that go? Vivo decided to hide the camera sensor inside the device. When you activate the front camera it pops up from the top like a periscope or pop-up flash. It supposedly takes less than a second to show up and you’re in business.
As for the earpiece speaker, Vivo is making the entire screen vibrate itself similar to a speaker so you can hear calls even without completely holding the device close to your ear.
It’s a pretty cool implementation we wouldn’t mind seeing it in other devices. But at the moment Vivo says they don’t have plans to release an actual device based on this form. Who knows what’s in store for us in the coming years though? This could usher in a new era for smartphones and we’re pretty excited for that.
Source: The Verge + Android Central
