Needless to say, the Vivo NEX looks promising and tempting. But at the end of the day, no phone is perfect and this one is also no exception. So, if you have been thinking of buying this phone, it makes sense to know both sides of the story. To help out with that, instead of going through only the good features (which you’re likely to find on other sites), check out this list of Vivo NEX pros and cons.
Vivo NEX Pros
1. Futuristic Design
The first point has to be about its innovative design. In the last few years, only a few manufacturers have stood out in the field of smartphone design. If you ask me, Samsung Galaxy S8 (Infinity Display) and the HTC U11 (squeezable edges) were the last notable innovations. The Vivo NEX with its eye-catching pop-up selfie camera is one of the rare phones joining this league of bleeding-edge tech. Coupled with an in-display fingerprint scanner, slim bezels, and a pop-up selfie camera, the Vivo NEX is every bit the futuristic phone we’ve been waiting for. With a screen-to-body ratio of 91.24 percent, you get a massive amount of screen real estate without any notch, bezels or mics getting in your way. Plus the selfie camera works as described. Whenever you need it, the module will pop up. Leave it idle for a few minutes and it will return to its hiding spot. What’s more, the in-display fingerprint sensor completes the circle and the Super AMOLED display is the cherry on top.
2. The Power of Snapdragon 845 and AI
The Vivo NEX is powered with Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 845 chipset, one of the fastest processors right now. The 845 boasts of a 10-nm FinFET process and Kryo 385 CPU cores, giving it a 25% performance boost compared to its predecessor. In real-world scenarios, the Snapdragon 845 can handle almost all the jobs and task-sharing capabilities seamlessly. There’s no lag and the synthetic benchmark scores beat the top phones on Antutu, as per our tests. Apart from that, the phone has a swath of AI features including integrated Google Lens functionality, monochrome selfie mode and beauty mode.
3. Great Camera Quality
On top of it, the NEX sports the Sony IMX363 lens on the rear camera. This is coupled with a 4-axis optical image stabilization (OIS), thus giving you quality blur-free photos. Here are few pictures captured using the rear camera of the Vivo NEX. Also, the front camera has quite a few eye-catching features. You get iPhone X-like monochrome studio effect along with a couple of other features.
4. Brisk Charging
There are many charging mechanisms today that let you top up the battery life of your phone in the blink of an eye. Ok, I might be exaggerating, but you get the point. While the NEX doesn’t carry any known charging standards but going by our calculations it should stand ahead of OnePlus’s Dash Charge (now rebranded as Warp Charge) owing to its power rating of 10V/2.25A. In our initial tests, the battery levels went from 3% to 20% in eleven minutes and it took around thirty minutes to reach 60%.
5. Audio Quality
The NEX bundles the DSD (Direct Stream Digital) mode for high fidelity audio. Hi-Fi can pretty much recreate the original sound quality with almost no distortion. What’s more, almost all the music apps like iMusic, YouTube, GooglePlay Music support Hi-Fi.
Vivo NEX Cons
1. Heavy & Fragile
Though the phone is as futuristic as it can get, it has one major issue. Thanks to the 4000mAH battery unit, the Vivo NEX falls on the heavier side and weighs 199 grams. Plus, the edges feel a bit thick and lack the curved finish on the edges that you’d usually find in most of the premium phones such as the Galaxy S9 Plus or the Zenfone 5Z. And thanks to the pop-up camera, a full bumper case is a no-no. So, one can only pray if, by sheer bad luck, your phone decides to take a plunge when the camera module is out. Also, Vivo has claimed that the module can go up and down close to 50,000 times without any problems. 50,000 times roughly translates into 4 years of regular use. But if you are someone who loves to (read obsessed with) click selfies, you may hit the mark sooner.
2. Still on USB-C 2.0
When most of the recent flagships such as the Galaxy S9, Nokia 7 Plus and Google Pixel 2 pack the new USB-C 3.0 standard cable, the Vivo NEX is still stuck with older version of USB-C 2.0. The USB-C 2.0 means a slower rate of data transfer.
3. No Face Unlock
Unlocking your phone without you having to touch any button or the screen is a blissful experience. Sadly, the NEX doesn’t yet feature Face Unlock meaning that you’d have to resort to either the fingerprint lock or the conventional pattern lock. On the bright side, the in-display fingerprint sensor is quite lit.
4. Jovi: Structural Bloatware?
The trend of adding extra hardware buttons that started with Samsung Note 8 is refusing to die out soon. And sadly, it’s fast catching up with other phones (sigh). I am not a huge fan of additional buttons on phones. I call them structural bloatware. In most cases, these buttons sit exactly where the volume buttons on most phones usually rest. More often than not, you’d be more likely to push this button if you’re looking to lower the volume or when you’re looking to capture a screenshot.
The Notchless Future is Here
At Rs 44,990, the Vivo NEX does seem a bit costly. But if you ask me, you’re getting all the shiny specs such as 8 GB of RAM & ultra-slim bezels and a plethora of new futuristic features. No phone is perfect and the NEX isn’t either and you have to make a couple of compromises. But at the end of the day, a phone that doesn’t lag, gives you quality photos and has ample storage is what matters more to me. That’s my opinion, though. What about you? Will you upgrade your Android smartphone to the all-new Vivo NEX?
