Smartphone makers have been working hard to create the perfect smartphone display: seamless, bezel-less, big, and beautiful. It's been a bumpy road filled with annoying notches, odd hole-punch cameras, and in-display fingerprint sensors that don't work very well.
China's Vivo, which was at the forefront of this race with its early Apex concept, never quite got it right — until now. The company's new flagship phone has the overall nicest display I've seen on a smartphone.
The Vivo Nex 3, which I've been playing with for about 10 days, has an enormous, 6.89-inch Super AMOLED display. The display curves on both sides, so much so that there's no room for physical side buttons. It has no notches or holes; the selfie camera pops up from the top of the phone, and the fingerprint scanner is embedded into the display. The bezels on the top and bottom of the screen are just slightly thicker than the ones on the iPhone 11 Pro. At 2,256 x 1,080 pixels, the resolution is not as high as on some other phones, but that's barely noticeable in real-life usage.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
All that may sound similar to most new smartphones these days, but you won't find a phone where it all comes together as nicely as on the Vivo Nex 3. Samsung's Note 10+ has a similar display, but the punch-hole camera sours the experience. On the Huawei's P30 Pro and Mate 30 Pro, it's the notch that's in the way. And there are a bunch of smartphones with uninterrupted displays, but none of them are nearly as good as the Vivo Nex 3's AMOLED (which, by the way, has been manufactured by Samsung).
I'm not a fan of pop-up cameras (it's the likely reason why the Vivo Nex 3 is not waterproof), or waterfall displays (under a direct light source, you'll inevitably see white streaks along the edges). But in this case, I'd be willing to live with those drawbacks, because the display is so nice that it just invites you to consume content, especially video.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
It helps that the Vivo Nex 3 is built extremely well — it feels great in the hand, though due to its thin aluminum frame and glass back it's also a fingerprint magnet and a constant dropping hazard. Even if you don't particularly like the circular rear camera array or the shiny back, it's one of those phones that illicits an immediate reaction from people around you.
Beefed up to the max
The Vivo Nex 3 is a true flagship — there are very few compromises here, specs-wise. It's got the most powerful Qualcomm mobile processor, the Snapdragon 855+. The model I have has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The camera system on the back consists of a main, 64-megapixel sensor, coupled with a 13-megapixel telephoto and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide sensor. The selfie camera has a 16-megapixel sensor and LED flash (which is why the pop-up module is wider than usual). There's also a 4,500mAh battery that supports 44W quick charging, and the phone runs on Android 9 Pie.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
There are a couple of things that are missing, like wireless charging, water resistance, face unlocking, and a stereo speaker. But for the most part, this is one of the most powerful smartphones you can buy.
Features overload is a real thing
I can't give you a complete picture of how well the Vivo Nex 3 performs. That's because the unit I've gotten for review is tailored for the Chinese market, and it came without Google's Play Store or any Google apps. Through various hacks I've managed to install most of the things I needed and gotten rid of some crapware (though not all) that came with the phone, but I was still constantly greeted by Chinese language notifications that prompted me to upgrade this or that app. I also didn't test 5G due to lack of coverage in my area.
What I can say is that the phone comes with an absolute onslaught of software features. Some, like the fancy always-on graphics or the visualizations that show up on the edges of the screen when you play music, are nice. But most of the time, I couldn't find what I was looking for. I ended up constantly using the built-in search (Baidu-based, and therefore quite foreign to me) to find this or that option. I can't say how an international version of the phone would work in this regard, but this is a real issue that made using the phone a lot less enjoyable.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
On the plus side, it's fast, thanks to the most powerful Snapdragon processor and tons of RAM, and the battery lasted for days, but keep in mind I've never used it as my main phone due to the issues described above.
A great camera
One thing I could properly take for a spin was the camera, and it was way beyond my expectations. I've recently tested the Vivo V17 Pro, which has a 48-megapixel sensor, and it wasn't very good. I also had reservations about Samsung's 64-megapixel sensor built into the Vivo Nex 3 — if it were the best, Samsung would be using it on its flagship Note 10.
But the Vivo Nex 3 produced great photos in most scenarios. In this complicated scene (below), it had a good (but not great) dynamic range while preserving great detail of the city in the distance without resorting to oversharpening. Colors were pretty accurate, too. Somewhat surprisingly, even the zoomed-in photo was pretty great; the ultra-wide camera took a slightly worse photo but it was still good.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
The Nex 3's main camera takes pixel-collated, 16-megapixel photos by default, but it can take 64-megapixel photos as well. The photo was imperfect, with a lot of visible noise as the Vivo struggled to process all that information, but it was sharper and had considerably more detail than any of the other photos I took from that vantage point.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Check out the comparison between Vivo Nex 3's 64-megapixel photo and the 12-megapixel photo taken with the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Yes, the iPhone's photo is overall better, but when you zoom in, you'll see that those extra megapixels aren't for nothing.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Enthused, I took some low-light photos with the Nex 3. They weren't as good as photos I took with an iPhone 11, but still, the Nex 3 did pretty well. The photo below is blurrier and darker than I would've liked; colors are decent but not entirely accurate.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
The Vivo Nex 3's selfie camera takes very bright photos in dark conditions, and that's even without the front-facing flash. I was often able to get a decent selfie when other phones could not produce one.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
In daylight, however, the Nex was just alright, especially in portrait mode, where Apple has everyone beat thanks to its supreme 3D scanner. On a bright day, I'd often get a badly burned sky in the background, and it took a bit of tinkering with the settings to fix that.
Check out a few other photos I took with the Vivo Nex 3 5G, below.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
The innovations are surprisingly good
When I first saw the phone, I feared that the button-less design will annoy me. Not so. The pressure sensitive side of the phone, which mimics three buttons (one to wake/sleep the phone and two for volume), worked just as well as physical buttons. The middle "button" is ridged so it's not hard to find, a smart design decision by Vivo.
The in-display fingerprint sensor is the fastest I've used by a large margin. It feels instant, and almost never fails. Perhaps this makes it less secure than some other phones, but it's hard to test that. In any case, I never missed face unlocking because the fingerprint recognition works so well.
Finally, I was worried about those curvy screen edges and accidental touches. But after using the phone for days and not having a single issue, I can say Vivo had done an excellent job at preventing accidental touches.
That screen, again
Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable
This is the part in which I rave about the Vivo Nex 3's display some more. In the past few years, I've gone through endless phones that tried something similar — curved, waterfall edges, tiny bezels, pop-up cameras — but this is the first time it all works together to create the most attractive smartphone display out there. My main phone is the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which has a really beautiful display, but the Vivo Nex 3, sitting on a shelf, constantly invited me to take it and play with it. I can think of no greater praise.
I can't recommend this Chinese version of the Nex 3 — it just takes too much getting used to compared to a phone intended for the European or the U.S. market. But if this phone is an early indication of what Samsung's next flagship will be like (some rumors say so), it's going to be pretty great.
The Vivo Nex 3 5G costs about US$810 in China, which is pretty steep. It is, however, a very nice smartphone with top-notch specs. It's hard to recommend it over something like the iPhone 11, but if you see it in the flesh, you'll see that it might just be worth the money.
