Vivo Apex 2020, a futuristic smartphone with an invisible front camera

Vivo Apex 2020

Since smartphone manufacturers decided to adopt the borderless design, they have been constantly imagining new solutions for placing the front camera. The classic solution was the notch popularized by the iPhone X. But some models are also equipped with sliding mechanisms or “pop-ups” to hide the front camera and make it appear when needed, for example for take a selfie.

But some companies are also working on an invisible front camera. In essence, the idea is to place this camera under the screen and make the part of the screen that hides the sensor transparent so that we can take pictures.

Chinese brands Xiaomi and Oppo have already shown their progress in developing this technology. And this week, Vivo unveils its new concept phone, the Vivo Apex 2020, one of the features of which is that the front camera is hidden under the screen.

Obviously, these are the novelties that the manufacturer was to unveil at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But as the show was canceled, Vivo had to do without it to make its presentation.

Vivo Apex 2020: a taste of the brand’s next high-end smartphones? 

To make it possible to hide the 16-megapixel front camera under the screen, Vivo indicates that it uses a new arrangement of pixels and circuits to multiply the light transmission of the part of the screen that hides the camera by 6 relative to the rest of this area. Besides this, optical interference, diffraction and parasitic flashes are reduced via algorithms.

Vivo Apex 2020 / © Vivo

But of course, the invisible front camera is not the only distinguishing feature of the Vivo Apex 2020. Other design elements make this concept phone an exceptional smartphone.

On the sides, the 6.45-inch screen of the device is curved at 120 °, which makes the borders almost non-existent.

In addition, the Apex 2020 has no physical buttons or ports. To charge the device, you must use 60W wireless charging technology.

Otherwise, the cameras on the back of the Vivo Apex 2020 also include some interesting innovations.

The device has only two cameras on the back: a 48-megapixel sensor and another 16-megapixel sensor. However, according to the manufacturer’s explanations, the 16-megapixel sensor offers a whole new type of zoom for smartphones. “Currently, almost all high-magnification telephoto solutions offered by industry giants were based on hybrid zoom lenses. The different levels of magnification and transitions are managed by algorithms, creating a compromise between resolution and quality of The APEX 2020 is equipped with: a continuous optical zoom, which makes it the first smartphone in the world to have a continuous zoom at high magnification “, specifies a press release. And the 48-megapixel sensor uses a “gimbal” stabilization solution whose stabilization angle would be extended by 200% compared to the OIS stabilizations traditionally found on smartphones.

For the rest of the data sheet, we have characteristics comparable to those of other high-end models marketed in early 2020: Snapdragon 865 chip, 12 GB of RAM and 5G.

Unfortunately, similar to the Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha or OnePlus Concept One, the Vivo Apex 2020 is an ideal phone not intended for mass production, but it is mainly used to show the following innovations. However, some of these novelties should land on other brand models.

Vivo Apex 2020 / © Vivo