Most of the more well-known companies have stopped innovating and have been playing it safe. No so much the Chinese manufacturers. Last year we saw Vivo show off the Apex phone with the pop-up front-facing camera, the first phone to attempt to solve the notch issue.
This year Vivo are set to take another evolutionary (and possibly revolutionary) step with their upcoming phone to be announced in two days time. Vivo have send out various teasers regarding the new phone, all based around the shape of a waterdrop.
The latest teaser was a video that showed random people on the street being asked to reach into a box that held the new phone and to describe what they felt. They were not allowed to look at the phone nor take it out of the box.
My Chinese is a bit rusty but apparently the object in the box was described as a pebble or metal soap. There was not a button or headphone jack anywhere to be felt. The device is a smooth rounded slab of metal and glass it seems. Could Vivo be releasing a phone that has not just wireless charging and in-display fingerprint sensor but also wireless data transfer and capacitive touch controls such as on the HTC U12+?
Why is this significant to us Aussies I hear you ask? New ideas from one Chinese manufacturer, especially one as big as Vivo, tend to filter across into other Chinese designs. We may see it, or a variation of it, make it to an OPPO phone in the future, after all OPPO and Vivo are owned by the same parent company.
The new Vivo phone is set to be announced on the 24th of January in China and you can be sure we will be watching closely. What about you? Interested?
I like the sounds of this, other than not having any way of telling which is the screen side, and which is the top/bottom of the screen!