Vivo Nex: Elevating selfie camera, AI smart detection and other top features

Vivo Nex, which launched in India on Thursday, is one of the few phones in the world to come with a motorised pop-out selfie camera. The unique hardware arrangement allows the phone to have a larger screen-to-body ratio, without increasing the phone dimensions or adding a distracting notch on the phone.

Apart from the elevating selfie-camera, Vivo Nex is also a high-end phone with top-of-the-line specifications - Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and 8GB of RAM. Priced at ₹44,990, the smartphone competes with the likes of Honor 10, OnePlus 6, Samsung Galaxy S9+ and other top-end Android phones.

Let's take a look at the top features of Vivo Nex.

Elevating selfie camera
Undoubtedly, the top highlight of the new Vivo phone is the motorised pop-out camera. The front-camera module, which is tucked into the top edge of the phone, pops out when you're taking selfies. It also pops out when you're making video calls, essentially anything that will require your front camera. The front cam has a Sony IMX363 sensor with 8-megapixel resolution. On the back, Vivo Nex has 12-megapixel and 5-megapixel dual cameras. READ: Vivo Nex Camera Review

In-screen fingerprint sensor
Another unique feature of Vivo Nex is the in-screen fingerprint sensor. This essentially means you can touch the screen to unlock the phone. This feature is available on a very limited phones at the moment, and at some point, both Apple and Samsung were rumoured to consider the feature for their flagship phones. Apart from unlocking the phone, the fingerprint sensor can also be used for privacy and app encryption. It also lets you authenticate payments.

Artificial Intelligence scene detection
Vivo Nex also joins the growing list of phones to include Artificial Intelligence (AI). The phone uses AI to add smart scene identification through the camera. The feature is in addition to the Google Lens, Google's AI app that lets you look up information about an item by just pointing the camera to it.

The AI scene detection allows the phone to identify the scene and provide the photo effects based on each scene. Currently, it can identify 17 different scenes including people, nighttime settings, flowers, plants, and food among others. Vivo says the mode allows users to get better-looking photos without adjusting photo parameters.

Smart motion
Vivo Nex also comes with a bunch of gesture-based features. For instance, you can shake the phone to turn on the flash light. You can slide upward to unlock the phone, or slide downward to take a photo. You can also draw letters on the phone screen to launch a few apps. For example, drawing C on the screen will open the camera application while drawing W will launch WhatsApp app.

Split screen
Even though a lot of phones come with split screen functionality, Vivo Nex has added a few more features to it. It has added a floating icon in the full screen view of certain apps including Google Play Movies & TV, Chrome, Gmail, Videos, File Manager, Calculator, and YouTube. The apps that can display notifications in the full screen view are Facebook, Messages, Twitter, and WhatsApp.