Vivo’s Apex 2020 concept phone hides a camera under a wrap-around display

The latest phone you can’t buy from the Chinese phone maker comes with 60W wireless charging and has no ports or physical buttons

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The Apex 2020 has no bezels, power port or volume rocker. (Picture: Vivo)

Karen Chiu

Published: 4:00pm, 28 Feb 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

For three years now, Vivo has been trying to hide the selfie camera.

It first tried concealing it with a pop-up module inside the body. Then it got rid of the selfie camera altogether. Now it’s bringing back the front lens… even though you can’t see it.

The Apex 2020 is the Chinese phonemaker’s latest concept device that was supposed to debut at the now-canceled Mobile World Congress. The phone’s 16-megapixel selfie camera lives underneath the screen, unlike on most phones where you’ll usually find a special place for it cut out in a notch or punch hole. But with the Apex 2020, the screen completely covers it.

Under-display cameras aren’t a new concept: Samsung, Xiaomi and Vivo’s sister company Oppo are all working on it. But in 2020, we still can’t buy a phone with this feature. The reason? It’s really hard to make it work.

Cameras need light to take a good photo, but a screen naturally blocks light. Vivo the area of the screen above the Apex 2020’s selfie camera lets in six times more light than the rest of the screen. The photo is then optimized with software -- the same way that Oppo handled its concept under-display camera last year.