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Oppo And Vivo Are Setting The Pace For Android And Apple

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Whilst Apple and Samsung have popularised near all-screen displays with minimal bezels, it’s Vivo and Oppo that are setting the pace.

Oppo’s latest device, the Find X, has curved edges and virtually no bezel, save for a small chin at the bottom. That gives it an 87% screen to body ratio, 5.5% higher than the near all-screen display of the iPhone X.

These numbers might sound like small margins, but they make a difference. Just look at the Find X and marvel at how there’s (nearly) nothing but screen on the front of the device, it’s undeniably impressive.

The tradeoff, of course, is the mechanical pop-up camera sensor at the top of the device. Presumably, Apple and Samsung played with similar ideas and decided against them because, well, it can look a bit gimmicky.

When Samsung ditched removable parts in its Galaxy S line in 2015 and went for a solid, locked design like Apple - most other Android manufacturers followed suit. And for good reason, Android phones up until that point had often looked - and felt - like utility phones that do a bit of everything. That design upgrade changed that. So I can understand why the big players would turn their noses up at a slide out camera.

But they shouldn’t, because it kind of works, doesn’t it? It’s not a flimsy, awkward component that might snap off like Vivo’s version of a pop-up camera - it looks well thought out. And, most importantly, it means an all-screen display. The way Oppo has solved the all-screen display design problem is clever and, if Samsung had done the same, I don’t think it would’ve compromised the Korean company’s design principles.

It’s not just in design that these lesser-known Android manufacturers are stealing a march on the big players either. In the actual technology, you know, the good stuff, they’re getting a headstart too. Chinese company Vivo was the first to produce a smartphone with an in-display fingerprint reader, beating out Samsung’s upcoming Note 9, which had been rumored to include something similar.

ZTE, Lenovo, Huawei and others are working on flexible display technology too. So Samsung can expect a strong, cheaper, challenge to its long-rumored, smartphone-industry savor the Galaxy X. Clearly,  being a hardware pioneer is not reserved for the top two companies anymore.

Where Samsung and Google are spending their efforts, and money, on building all-encompassing artificial intelligence, the smaller companies are taking on the much cheaper endeavor of inventing new hardware upgrades.

The future of mobile is in AI and automation, form-factor will become less important as you use your phone less thanks to an AI assistant, but for the meantime; Oppo, Vivo and other lesser-known phone makers are truly setting the pace.

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