You may recall one of the random stars of MWC, a Vivo phone that featured an all-display design without a notch, thanks to a clever pop-up selfie camera mechanism. That phone was a concept called APEX. Today, Vivo is back to teasing a similar phone with a pop-up camera in a hype-filled teaser to set the stage for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Vivo has called the phone an “upcoming smartphone,” which could mean that they’ll sell it some day. They also may never sell the thing and might be using this opportunity to build buzz around their sponsorship of the World Cup, which kicks off in June. In fact, that’s probably exactly all they are doing here. In the press note sent to us along with the promo video above, no where do they lay out specs or a release time frame. Good job, Vivo, you got us.
Does a phone with a pop-up selfie camera make sense? Sure, if you really want to fast forward to a world without display notches and true all-display fronts. But as almost everyone noted the minute we saw that first Apex concept, more moving parts isn’t typically a good thing. Does anyone want to guess what kinds of failure rates a moving selfie camera might run into? I don’t.
For now, let’s just take this Vivo phone (which doesn’t have a name, but Vivo wants us to believe is a real product) and nod at their attempt to be a first at implementation a new technology. This is something Vivo is quite good at, actually. During CES, they were the first company to show off in-display fingerprint readers.
Anyone interested in a pop-up selfie?