Vivo aims for high-end segment with premium, hi-tech handset sporting large dual displays

The new phone’s radical design and technology make it the Chinese smartphone maker’s most expensive offering yet

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Nex Dual Display Edition phone features a 6.39-inch AMOLED display on the front and a 5.49-inch AMOLED rear display with triple cameras. Photo: Handout

Li Taoin Shenzhen

Published: 12:57pm, 12 Dec 2018Updated: 1:15pm, 12 Dec 2018

China’s Vivo launched a new premium handset on Tuesday, equipped with sleek front and back displays as the Dongguan-based company aims high with its most innovative and hi-tech phone yet, carrying a price tag of 4,998 yuan (US$725).

Apart from a 6.39-inch AMOLED display on the front, the Nex Dual Display Edition phone features a 5.49-inch AMOLED rear display with triple cameras. This means users get a bezel-free front and can snap high-quality selfies using the main cameras.

The company has also included some of the best innovations currently available such as 3D sensing technology, facial recognition, in-display finger scanning, as well as 10G RAM and 128GB of storage.

Vivo’s latest expensive offering, comes at a time when Chinese smartphone brands are continuing to win share in the domestic market, while foreign brands such as Apple’s iPhones are losing growth momentum. Just this week, Apple was slapped with a court injunction in China and banned from selling some older iPhone models, over allegations it violated at least two patents of US chip maker Qualcomm. Apple is expected to appeal the preliminary ruling and said its phones are still available for sale in China.

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“We do not want to offer a handset that looks like an iPhone. We want to design and provide something completely innovative and different,” Vivo’s design director Kyle Xiao, said during the product launch event in Shanghai on Tuesday night.

Huawei and Vivo, the top two smartphone brands in China, are the only brands that have reported positive growth in shipments in the third quarter this year. The phone manufacturers’ shipments expanded 13 per cent and 4 per cent year-on-year respectively, between July and September, according to research by Counterpoint in November.