A 5G phone with no ports … and all glass.
To jog your memory, APEX is Vivo’s line of concept phones, with the edition that was announced earlier this year being its second model. The pitch? It was some crazy all-glass “Super Unibody” sans buttons nor ports, and boy did it look slick in the press shots. It wasn’t until yesterday — weeks after MWC wrapped — when I finally got to hold a unit in my hands. Just as I was starting to appreciate the premium feel of this rare device, though, my unit slipped off my hand and destroyed another APEX in a display case, an accident for which I apologized profusely.
To be fair, most glass phones would be unlikely to survive the impact of another phone landing on a corner. And yet, the fallen APEX remained intact, which suggests the “G2 curved-surface waterdrop glass” does serve its purpose. Specifically, the glass thickens around the phone’s bezel, hence the waterdrop shape in a cross-section. Still, such protection comes at a cost: it requires a complex process combining hot-bending techniques and CNC glass shaping methods.
