Everybody can basically agree that during this year’s Mobile World Congress, Samsung had owned the annual event by virtue of the unveiling of its latest flagship offerings -- the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9 Plus. But it can be argued that one of the other phone makers that had generated some buzz at the world’s most popular mobile tech show was Vivo, especially with the introduction of its Apex smartphone.
When Vivo had officially confirmed the existence of the Apex handset, it had highlighted the device as a concept phone, and not as an upcoming release. But according to a report recently published by China based tech news source IT Home (and picked up by Android Authority), it appears that the Apex might be launched commercially either some time in the second half of this year, or in 2019.
As reported by IT Home, Vivo officials had apparently delivered the announcement at a recent tech conference held in China. Assuming all of this is true, it would be reasonable to expect that production of the Apex smartphone will likely begin next quarter, which means that by the final quarter of this year (or even earlier), we could start seeing the device in store shelves. If not, a commercial launch in the first quarter of 2019 would not be too far fetched an idea.
It goes without saying that at this point, details regarding pricing and availability are non-existent yet. But with what the Vivo Apex handset can offer, the mobile industry and consumers will no doubt be watching out for any Apex related news in the near future.
There are plenty of reasons fans of Vivo (and hardcore fans of Android) should be excited about the release of the Apex handset. As far as near bezel-less designs go, the Apex’s should be one of the most elegant. The device is equipped with a very generous 6 inch organic light emitting diode (OLED) display that is edge to edge.
But what will really get fans raving is the functionality behind the sleek screen. This is because Vivo has cleverly transformed the entire bottom half of the Apex’s front side panel into a fully functioning fingerprint scanner. This means that mobile users can just place their finger at any point in the smartphone display’s bottom half, and instantly have their identity authenticated. On top of that, the screen is also capable of reading a couple of fingers at the same time (for added security).
