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All over the world, the use of smartphones has exploded in recent years, but the industry itself is stagnating. Nowadays, phones all have similar characteristics and jumps ahead of the past have been replaced by tiny steps. Vivo, the Chinese manufacturer that you may have seen on the World Cup display boards this year, is here to break this trend with two revolutionary new features
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Vivo Nex S review: What you need to know
The Vivo Nex S incorporates a pop-up camera for selfies and an on-screen fingerprint reader, which allows the screen fill the front of the phone unlike the previous one. The phone's innovative design is complemented by a huge 6.59-inch Full HD + display, a rear-facing dual camera, and a stunning Snapdragon 845. chip and 8GB of RAM. On paper, the Nex S has all the ingredients to challenge some of the best phones on the market.
The catch? Availability of the UK is rare, the phone is preloaded with bloatware and has a boring Android overlay – FuntouchOS
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Vivo Nex S Review : Price and Competition
At the time of writing these lines, it is difficult to find the Vivo Nex S at a reputable retailer. Instead, you will have to rely on private sellers on eBay and WondaMobile. The phone is available in two sizes of storage, 128GB and 256GB and prices range from £ 667 to around £ 800.
Even though the Nex S is unique, there is a lot of competition at this price: the Samsung Galaxy S9 + at £ 769, the regular S9 at £ 551, the OnePlus 6 at £ 469, the Google Pixel 2 XL at £ 799, and the iPhone X at £ 959.
It is interesting to note that these phones headlights do not offer the same screen / body ratio, the camera pop-up or the fingerprint reader on the screen that offers the Nex Vivo S. The only other phone in the Kingdom One that has a fingerprint reader in the display is the Huawei Mate RS Porsche Design, which sells for £ 1500.
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Vivo Review of Nex S: Design and Quality of Construction
The Nex S is an incredible device and it all starts with this fingerprint reader. igitales. Positioned about 1.5 cm from the bottom edge, the sensor appears on your screen in the form of a circular green imprint on the screen. In order to preserve the battery, however, Vivo chooses to show only the fingerprint model when you woke the phone by the power button or when it is raised to a surface.
The representation of the fingerprint sensor is slightly slower than that of a normal fingerprint reader, but the speed achieved is not so bad. It takes a little more than a second to recognize your fingerprint and you only have to put your finger on the screen very lightly. However, it's not as reliable as its rivals, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to unlock the phone.
It's a great party piece, but even more special is the motorized camera, which fires in the phone. action when you switch to selfie mode in the camera application. As soon as you make the switcheroo, it appears in about two seconds flat – fast enough to capture a quick selfie with a celebrity.
Of course, the main reason for having a pop-up camera in the first place is that you do not need a notch to accommodate it, so the screen takes up about the entire front of the phone. In the case of Vivo Nex S, it occupies 91.24%, to be precise. To put this in perspective, the S9 + is around 84%, while the Pixel 2 XL is even lower at around 76%. It's a lot more screen in front of you and it comes to play when you play, watching movies, or even using the phone as a satnav. If you are wondering about the phone's proximity sensor, this is somewhere on the top edge of the phone's screen.
By switching to the physical attributes of the phone, the Nex S is everything you expect from a flagship phone. With its curved edges and incredibly lightweight back panel – when you tilt the phone towards the light, bands of red, green and blue seem to radiate the back – this gives a special feel.
Regarding the size of the phone, even with this incredible relationship between the screen and the body, it's absolutely huge. It measures 77 x 8 x 162 mm (WDH) – about half a centimeter more than the OnePlus 6 – and weighs 199 g. This makes it heavier than the Samsung Galaxy S9 + (189g), the Google Pixel 2 XL (175g) and the OnePlus 6 (177g).
As for ports and buttons, Vivo conveniently placed the power button and the right edge, while a dedicated "Jovi" button is located on the left edge. Jovi, is the personal assistant of Vivo (more who below). On the top edge, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack and pop-up camera, the bottom speaker, the phone's dual SIM 4G tray and the USB Type-C port, which supports Quick Charge 4 from Qualcomm.
Unfortunately, NFC is missing from the feature list, which means you can not make contactless payments on your phone. There is no IP protection rating, which means that the Nex S is not water resistant and that it also lacks a wireless charging and is a microSD extension slot. With the fast charging capabilities of the phone and the enormous storage possibilities of 128 or 256 GB, the last two do not pose big problems.
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Vivo Nex S Review:
The Nex S has a 6.59-inch Super AMOLED display that works at a resolution of 1080 x This results in a pixel density of 388ppi, lower than that of the Samsung Galaxy S9 + at 529ppi and the Pixel 2 XL at 539ppi, but higher than the OnePlus 6 at 402ppi. However, this should not affect you unless you are looking to use the phone to watch VR content. This is a perfectly neat display seen from normal distances.
As for the brightness of the phone, this is not a problem either. Measured with our X-Rite i1 DisplayPro Calibrator, I observed a maximum luminance of 417cd / m². Under direct sunlight and with automatic brightness turned on, this figure rises to 567cd / m², which means that it will be more than readable in bright sunlight. Still, it can not compete with the Samsung Galaxy S9 + HDR display, which can reach 810cd / m²
Unlike some of its competitors, the Nex S does not have sRGB or DCI P3 options the phone's display settings and it's not very color accurate. The contrast is perfect, as you can imagine, but the colors are much too bright and candy.
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Vivo Nexus Review S: Performance
When comes to gross performance, the Vivo Nex S is no exception. With a 2.7GHz Octa-core Snapdragon 845 chip and 8GB RAM on board, it's a phone that will go through everything you throw at it. The most intensive games, such as PUBG Mobile, heavy multitasking, nothing bothers and in the benchmarks GFXBench and Geekbench 4, the phone behaves dramatically.
^ Geekbench 4
In the graph below, the S9 +, the S8 + and the Pixel 2 XL are all slower, which is explained by the fact they work at a higher resolution than the Nex S. Note however that you can get higher frame rates on Samsung phones. the display settings menu.
^ GFXBench
The Vivo Nex S's battery life is mediocre, as one might expect from a phone with such a big screen. It lasted 13hrs 31mins in the tipping test of expert reviews, trailing behind the Samsung Galaxy S9 + at 14hrs 36mins and OnePlus 6 at 17hrs 18mins
^ Battery Life
Vivo Nex S Review: Software
The Vivo Nex's biggest and inevitable flaw, however, is its software, which is Android Android 8.1 Oreo coated with Vivo's own launcher: FuntouchOS 4.
The user interface is disorganized and filled with unnecessary bloatware. In fact, even to install Android apps on the absent Play Store, you will first have to install Google Play Services, and this is not the easiest thing to do. Fortunately, the people of XDA Developers are here to help and, once all the bumpf is in place, at least you will be able to install and run your favorite apps like on N & # 39; any other Android device.
will not be able to do this, however, is reassigning the Jovi button on the phone on the left side to Google Assistant. Since Jovi is pretty useless and that pressing the button by accident is too easy, it is a pretty important irritation.
The pain is not over, though. For some reason, Vivo has locked the ability to change the default launcher. You can change it, but you have to jump through the hoops to do it; You must log in with a Vivo account and to get a Vivo account you will need a Chinese phone number. There is a workaround. You can contact Vivo Support or send Vivo a message on Facebook to request a "public account" as shown here, but, frankly, it's a bit painful.
On the plus side, the overlay as it is has a few positive whims, such as the ability to customize the behavior of the phone's navigation buttons. Here you can remove the navigation bar and have three small indicators at the bottom of the phone screen, which you interact by dragging from the bottom of the phone. It's odd at first, but once you understand it, it's a rather intuitive way to navigate the operating system.
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Vivo Nex S Review: Camera
The auto-pop selfie camera is an 8 megapixel f / 2 effort while on the back, the Vivo Nex S features a dual camera featuring a 12-megapixel f / 1.8 snapper with autofocus phase detection (PDAF) and a f / 2.4, 5-megapixel secondary camera that serves as a depth sensor for portrait shots back blurred background. The first is equipped with a four-axis optical stabilization and an electronic image stabilization to smooth video clips.
There are also interesting software features. The first is that you can "boost" the resolution up to 24 megapixels by interpolation. This does not add any additional detail to the photos, but the resulting images look a little brighter and more punchy, probably due to the accentuation.
^ Vivo Nex mode S & # 39; 24M uses interpolation, which adds no detail
The "AI" mode of the phone, meanwhile, aims to improve the overall image by automatically recognizing what you are pointing at the camera application and adjusting the settings appropriately. The photos captured in this mode were a little too vibrant and too saturated for my taste, but for sharing on social networks, they work well.
^ Vivo Nex Mode S 'AI produces spectacular, but extremely saturated images
As for the overall quality of rear-facing cameras, the detail they capture and post-processing under the hood is good but not compatible with flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9 + or the Pixel 2 XL
As you can see in the photos below (cropped to about 300%), the Samsung Galaxy S9 + is capable of capturing many more details. The bricks and tiles are noticeably softer in Vivo's photographs – there's simply no competition.
^ The Vivo Nex S produces significantly softer photos than the Samsung Galaxy S9 + outdoors
test of life, the Vivo Nex S, exceptionally, has done much better. The image below is, perhaps, less accurate than that of the S9 +, but as far as noise is concerned, the Vivo compares quite well with the Samsung
^ Vivo Nex S vs S9 + low brightness: the photo of the Nex S 'is a touch warmer than the S9 + but the sound is well managed
It's a similar story with the selfie camera of 8 megapixels. This produces acceptable results but compared to those of his rival, the photos seem over-saturated, unnatural and rather sweet.
As for video, the phone can shoot up to 4K (3840 x 2160) at 30fps without the option to record at 60fps. The good news is that the stabilization of the video works remarkably well, and has been able to smooth the video to an impressive degree, even when walking and running with the phone in my hand.
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Vivo Nex S Review: Verdict
The Vivo Nex S is a unique smartphone. It looks great, it is beautifully built, has the best processor you can currently find in a phone and a huge screen, really edge to edge.
The problem? It's far from perfect. The camera is below the lighthouse standards of modern times, and its software is not up to it either.
In short, there is much to love here. It's fabulous in many ways, but I could not recommend it before the big hitters of 2018
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