Today is a big day for vivo, as the Chinese company
has unveiled the market ready version of its APEX concept smartphone, which
shocked and awed the world at MWC in February. And while the vivo NEX S is the
new flagship device, the NEX A comes to complement it in the company's roster,
bringing with it a lower price. That is justified because the NEX A is powered
by the Snapdragon 710 SoC, and not the 845 in the S. It has a 'vanilla'
fingerprint sensor on the back, and not an under-display unit.
The NEX A also settles for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of
non-expandable built-in storage, whereas all of the other specs are identical
to those of the NEX S. So it is built around a 6.59" notch-free Full HD+
Super AMOLED touchscreen with a 91.24% screen-to-body ratio, and a 4,000 mAh
battery.
The NEX A will have a dual rear
camera setup with a 12 MP f/1.8 main sensor (Sony IMX363) with Dual Pixel
autofocus, 1.4um pixels, OIS and EIS, aided by a 5 MP f/2.4 secondary camera.
Selfies are taken care of by the Elevating Front Camera. The periscope-like
thing has 8 MP resolution and f/2.0 aperture.
The vivo NEX A runs Android 8.1 Oreo with Funtouch
OS 4.0. It has a 3.5mm headset jack on the top side, a USB-C port for fast
charging (a 22.5W charger comes in the box), dual-SIM functionality, and one
single speaker on the bottom.
It's 2018, so a new phone launch, especially one as
highly anticipated as this one, couldn't have taken place with no mention of
AI. Thankfully, the NEX A is full of that. vivo says it's pursuing the
"ultimate AI photography technologies", with things such as AI HDR,
AI Filters, and AI Photo Composition. The camera AI has 18 tags and 140 scenes
it can recognize.
The Jovi Intelligent Voice
Assistant has been updated with "powerful voice commands", image
identification, and a dedicated button you can use to access it. Jovi now lets
you use apps and features with your voice.
The vivo NEX A will be out in China in red and black
on June 23 for CNY 3,898 - that's about US$ 608 or € 515 at the current exchange
rates. Pre-orders start tomorrow. There's no word yet on international
availability. The black model switches RGB colors under different lighting
conditions thanks to triangular elements, through what vivo calls Holographic Diffraction
Dynamic Color Illusion Technology.
