The modern smartphone release cycle pattern constantly changes, Not only do manufacturers release more phones more often, but many now try to subvert the leak culture of the market by leaking details themselves. It sort of works – it keeps the megafans interested and the company free from embarrassing leaks from others that they were trying to keep hush hush.
Vivo has started to embrace this by showing off concept sketches of its next NEX smartphone (see above). The company is using the comparisons of a watch face for the circular camera module and a waterfall for the curved glass of the display.
Curved glass on its own is nothing new to smartphones so it seems from the first image that the Vivo NEX 3 will have a completely unobstructed display, hence the water drop splash to suggest it’s a slick body of water (gosh we hate marketing).
Let’s escape Vivo’s water metaphor and think about a smartphone display with no notch, cut out or even camera. Again, nothing new considering the influx of phones with pop up cameras like the OnePlus 7 Pro and Vivo’s own original NEX.
More interesting is the angle of the curved glass, which you can see in the below photo also posted on Weibo by Vivo that is much more angled than we are used to. When viewed from the front it will have no bezels.
This will make the phone hard to hold no doubt but given the weird NEX Dual Display that we didn’t think much of, the NEX 3 is shaping up to be a more conventional but potentially more usable smartphone.
Also see: Best Vivo phones
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.