24 hours after Meizu unveiled the world’s first hole-less smartphone without any physical port, speaker grille, and SIM card slot, Vivo has gone ahead and unveiled the APEX 2019 on similar lines. The APEX 2019 features a Snapdragon 855 chipset, 5G connectivity, and lacks any cutouts for SIM slot, physical buttons and ports, and speaker grille.

There’s only one hole on the device and that’s for the microphone that sits right below the screen at the front. Featuring a “Super Unibody” design that’s inspired from water droplets, the APEX 2019 is made from unequal but thick and continuous glass. This is an expensive process that requires the glass to be bent first and then machined using CNC. The 6.39-inch OLED display at the front uses a piezoelectric transducer to emit sound.

The device also features an in-display fingerprint scanner that covers the entire display area. Plus, one can use the fingerprint scanner to directly unlock the device and open an app in one go. The physical volume and power buttons have been replaced by capacitive pressure sensitive buttons.

Unlike Meizu’s Zero, the APEX 2019 is not relying on wireless charging. Instead, it features a MagPort — magnetic pogo pin connector — at its back where one can connect the charger. Other specs of the APEX include 12GB RAM, a whopping 512GB of storage, and a 12MP + 13MP dual camera set up at the back. The lack of a SIM card slot is taken care by eSIM support.

Surprisingly, there’s no selfie camera on the APEX. To save internal space and cram so many components, Vivo has used a duplex PCB design to compress the entire PCB stack.

Unlike the Meizu Zero, the Vivo APEX is a concept phone which means it is not going to be released to the public. We are likely going to see Vivo use some of the technology from APEX 2019 in the 2019 variant of the NEX S. The final consumer version of the device will also feature a selfie camera since that’s a glaring omission otherwise.