The phone of the future, now
vivo announced their newest flagship, the NEX 3 tonight at an event in Shanghai, and we’ve honestly never been this excited for a vivo flagship before. The nearly buttonless phone has a lot of features we’ve never seen in a phone before, and the vivo finally has a flagship that’ll rival the offerings of its rivals, namely Huawei and Samsung.
Nearly button less, border-less design looks absolutely stunning
vivo’s button-less APEX 2019 stunned us when we saw it a few months ago, and since then the company has taken quite a few design cues from the concept phone and applied it to the NEX 3.
Each touch of the virtual side keys delivers a convincing amount of haptic feedback, and there’s a total of 7 pressure points on the side to make sure that you get the same amount of feedback from the virtual keys compared to actual, physical keys.
The actuation force for the side buttons can be customized depending on your liking, though vivo also included a small, auxiliary physical power button on the top. The virtual buttons take a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it pressing them is no problem at all.
Moving right along the other sensors, the NEX 3 also gets a 13-megapixel wide-angle camera, along with a 13-megapixel 2x optical zoom lens.
The display is the very best you can ask for (aside from the full HD+ display): aside from its sheer size, it’s also HDR 10 capable, has a 100% sRGB coverage, and has maximum brightness of 800 nits.
Smaller hands might have trouble using the NEX 3 one-handed though, and the all-glass body makes the phone a little slippery to handle without a case.
Inside NEX 3 is the latest Qualcomm silicon – the Snapdragon 855 Plus, the same chipset that powers ASUS’ ROG Phone II and the Black Shark 2. There’s more than enough RAM and storage to go around, with configurations that include 8GB/12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
And just like these gaming powerhouses, the NEX 3 also uses a custom Vapor Chamber Cooling System that keeps the phone’s innards cool.
Keeping the phone’s lights on is a 4500mAh battery that’s paired with an extremely fast 44w fast-charging system.
We still don’t have an idea if vivo will be selling the NEX 3 on our side of the world, though company reps tell us that they are seriously looking into the possibility.
Pricing for the NEX 3 are as follows:
NEX 4G 8GB/128GB – CNY 4998 (~Php 37k)
NEX 5G 8GB/256GB – CNY 5698 (~Php 42.2k)
NEX 5G 12GB/256GB – CNY 6198 (~Php 45.9k)
No local price has been set for the NEX 3 yet.
vivo NEX 3 Specs
- Snapdragon 855+ octa-core processor
- 8GB/12GB RAM
- 6.89-inch 19:3.9 POLED Full HD+ Waterfall Fullview display, 20:9 aspect ratio
- 128GB/256GB of non-expandable storage
- 4G, LTE
- Dual SIM
- Triple Rear Cameras: 64-megapixel f/1.8 main camera; 13-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle camera; 13-megapixel f/2.48 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom; with PDAF, LED Flash, Hyper HDR
- 16-megapixel f/2.09 pop-up front camera with selfie fill light
- WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0
- GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
- In-display fingerprint scanner, Jovi Voice Assistant, Vapor chamber cooling
- Android 9 Pie with FunTouch 9.1
- 4500mAh battery with 44w Super FlashCharge