Gadgetory

[Laughter] [Laughter] this is the vivo next the closest thing we've seen to a truly bizarre free phone yet buying perhaps the Oppo find X which is equally crazy should check out David's review if you haven't already so let's get this out of the way up front is this the phone that you should lust after absolutely but is this the phone you should actually run out and get to that I'd have to say probably not stick with me here and I'll explain why the best part of the move to have truly bezel free phones is the weird and wacky solutions to the question of where to put all the stuff that used to live above and below the display front facing cameras fingerprint scanners speakers and sensors all need relocating if we're going to have proper fullscreen phones the vivo next valiantly addresses those necessities in pursuit of the industries bezel free wet dream it doesn't succeed on every fun and there are more than a few caveats you need to be aware of before you decide on importing one let's start with the good things the screen on the vivo NEX is a great start it's really big for a phone that's barely any larger than a pixel 2 XL making the neck surprisingly manageable it has good white balance and the deep blacks and poppy colors you'd expect from an OLED display below a resolution display one please everyone but it along with the battery saving benefits of OLED to help you eke out a little more from the four thousand milliamp hour battery I didn't have any issues with arm such rejection and even though it didn't get bright enough for my taste outdoors it wasn't any worse than most phones but there's a lot more going on here than just scream by going very close to bezel that's the Nexus had to shuffle around a bunch of components the front-facing camera is perhaps the most exciting of these as it is a housed inside a small cavity on the top edge of the phone when you launch the front-facing camera it appears as if by magic then retreats back into the frame when it's no longer needed no matter how many times I showed this to someone I was always asked to do it again it's undeniably cool but there's no doubt that adding a moving part to a smart phone is a pretty bad idea the good thing about the camera mechanism is that I found it to be very resilient and sturdy even if it is still very early days I was intentionally rough on it banging it on things and forcing it back into the frame to see just how tough it was after a couple of weeks of abuse I expect it could take some pretty decent battle scars before you have any problems with it if you're worried about it breaking if you drop it you probably have more to worry about from breaking the screen than the but again if it didn't move it couldn't break because it's only needed for the front-facing camera though you won't need to use it anywhere near as much as the Oppo find X which needs to elevate the entire top edge of the phone to access either camera and even to unlock the phone if you're not particularly obsessed with selfies you're going to have even less to worry about on the next it's there when you need it but out of the way when you don't plus you'll know exactly when the NSA is spying on you in the toilet the screen is also the earpiece speaker there's a small vibration motor under the display that transmits sound waves through the whole screen it's barely audible covers around you I ran about the same as a normal incall speaker and the quality and volume is on par with any other phone because there's no face unlocking going on here you'll also find a fingerprint scanner under the display it works via a small camera that beeps are all cut out behind the screen it's apparently better than previous scanners but in practice it's just plain unreliable and still much slower than current capacitive scanners which begs the question how much inconvenience are you willing to put up with to have something as futuristic as the vivo NEX in your pocket using it feels like being part of a significant milestone in smartphone history but it is still just a phone and it brings with it a whole bunch of all-too-familiar smartphone problems I'm okay with putting up with a dodgy under glass scanner for now but it's pretty obvious why Samsung and Apple haven't used one of these yet the nexus specs the top-shelf snapdragon 845 8 gig of ram 256 of storage Android phone 1 Oreo and so on with the crazy performance you'd expect but there's no IP rating for these reasons no NFC wireless charging or microSD expansion these may matter to you or they may not but they're pretty standard smartphone complaints and this is a key point the next is not a silver bullet vivo hasn't so much solved a problem as migrated existing problems into a new form factor if you wouldn't buy a vivo phone before I wouldn't recommend you buy this one either case in point this software of course the next was made for a Chinese audience where iPhone inspired launchers are considered a good thing but the app drawl açaí OS copy will irritate most Android fans even switching up the launcher is an exercise in frustration requiring a Chinese phone number so you can create a vivo account to allow the security permissions to change the launcher to something less awful it's pretty convoluted and even if you go through all that you're just going to have other problems to contend with there's not a Google Play or Google Apps out of the box and while it's straightforward enough to force install them even then you'll have these shoes downloading many other common Android apps notifications are also pretty patching you so you'll just have to cross your fingers on that front there's no Google assistant shortcut and not even a way to quickly access the settings unless you have an Apple icon on your home screen there's also weird formatting issues for Clanton characters and various other compatibility and reliability problems with many of your favorite apps the Evo's jovi virtual voice assistant gets a dedicated button but because it only supports the Chinese language and only works with Chinese apps and services it's basically useless outside China the fun touch experience is understandable giving an awareness of the Nexus target market but the software as it stands makes the next phone that is fun to lust after but not one you actually want in your pocket unless you live in China now I can nitpick its faults all I like but I still love this phone how you feel about it will likely hinge on where you stand on novelty and gimmicks versus polish and reliability you'll either see the V phone X as a technical marvel or as a daily driver fraught with issues but the truth is it's both of these things now one area in which I was particularly surprised with the nexus camera while the shots from the front-facing camera unfortunately soft and lacked of detail and exposure the main cameras on the back are impressively competitive I took a bunch of shots alongside the pixel - and in a lot of cases the next came tantalizingly close to besting it the next cameras greatest weakness is its tendency to overexpose it also tends to over saturate a bit end over sharp and in post whether you like the shots it takes will depend if you judge your photos on your smartphone screen or at 100% crop on your computer for me I tend to bump saturation contrast and sharpness in an editing app anyway so the next saves me a few steps for others it'll understandably be in affront to the principles of good photography portrait mode is OK on an expert as with most phones it struggles with cutouts and artificial looking blur low-light is quite good with very little noise and clean images post-processing is clearly in effect if you go looking for it but the overall result is solid dynamic range is unfortunately not so great largely due to the camera's tendency to overexpose blowing out the highlights in the process camera does draw a lot of detail from shadowy areas even more so than the pixel - in a lot of cases color reproduction is also very accurate notwithstanding the tendency to pump saturation a little bit too much there's also 4k video at 30 frames per second and slow motion at 1080p and while video is stabilized it's not quite as good as that found on the p20 Pro or pixel - the battery is a little bit less impressive at 4000 milliamp hours it's bigger than most but despite the full HD OLED panel the vivo sucks the life out of it a bit faster than I would like I won't help too much on it here as the phonons receive multiple updates during my time with it and battery life may very well change it's also a Chinese unit being used in Europe so there's that to consider as well in any case the 22.5 rewards power brick can recharge the whole thing in just over an hour and a half you'll also get a case in the box and some decent earbuds but given that the next has a 3.5 mm headphone jack you're probably better off just plugging in your favorite pair of wired headphones because the v1 chip and built-in DAC produce really excellent audio all in all I have loved my time with the next despite its futuristic appearance it reminds us that phones are still phones and they come with the same kinds of issues despite any misgiving the vivo NEX makes this smartphone experience fun and exciting again and that is no small achievement perhaps even one big enough to make you look past it software and other issues so even if it isn't perfectly executed and probably not a phone you should use as your daily I really hope it's ambitious example influences other phones that come in its wake as always thank you so much for watching be sure to hit that notification bell so you know the next time we upload a video and head on over to Android Authority dot-com for more on the vivo next because we are your source for all things Android