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Vivo Nex 3’s ‘waterfall’ display and camera shown off in hands-on video

Vivo Nex 3’s ‘waterfall’ display and camera shown off in hands-on video

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With no physical volume buttons to get in the way

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A day after Vivo posted a short teaser trailer on its Weibo account, the first hands on video of the upcoming Vivo Nex 3 has been published online. The video comes from British YouTuber Arun “Mrwhosetheboss” Maini, and although it’s light on specifics and features pre-production hardware and software, it gives us a pretty extensive look at the Nex 3’s “waterfall” curved display, camera, and 5G connectivity.

The video suggests the early rumors of the phone having a screen-to-body ratio of “over 100 percent” might not be entirely accurate thanks to the presence of small top and bottom screen bezels, but it’s still impressive how far the screen screen extends round the sides of the device. Vivo has even switched the side power and volume buttons out in favor of a virtual solution, presumably so physical buttons don’t get in the way of the screen. A small section of grippy plastic apparently lets your thumb know when it’s on the touch-sensitive part of the device. We weren’t fans of the virtual buttons that Vivo used on its Apex 2019 concept smartphone, but hopefully they’ve been refined since then. 

It’s not an entirely port-less device like Vivo’s concept phone

Although the sides of the phone omit the typical power and volume buttons, this isn’t quite the port-less device that the Apex 2019 concept phone was. Along the top of the Vivo Nex 3 there’s a headphone jack and secondary physical power button (presumably for when you need to force a shutdown of the device), as well as a pop-up selfie camera. The phone has two microphones in total (one on the top and one on the bottom), and a single downward firing speaker next to what appears to be a USB-C port.

Beyond these details, the video doesn’t share too many specifics about the Vivo Nex 3. We don’t know resolution of its cameras for example, nor do we know which processor it uses, or how much RAM or on-board storage it has. For that, we’ll have to wait for the handset’s official launch, which can’t be far off given this marketing blitz.