The REAL Solution to the NOTCH - Vivo NEX Dual Display
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,877 words · ~9 min read
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as the performance improvements in each new generation of smartphones have
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dwindled engineering and marketing departments alike have looked for new
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ways to quantify just how great their
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latest gadgets really are now before we had the races for
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more megapixels thinner chassis and ever
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greater pixel density displays with all
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of these eventually reaching the point where they actually caused as many
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problems as they solved and lately it's been all about screen to
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body ratio and boy has this one ever resulted in some
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ugly ducklings thankfully it's almost over
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and i'm gonna tell you why with glasswire you can instantly see
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your current and past network activity detect malware and block badly behaving
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apps on your pc or Android device use offer code Linus to get 25 off glassware
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at the link below
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so the current goal for pretty much every modern smartphone manufacturer
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seems to be to build a phone with bezels
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so thin that they're effectively not even there i'm sure some of you are
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already drooling at the thought of an all screen phone but others might say
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well it's kind of stupid aren't bezel small enough as it is
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and those people have a point for some of the folks out there bezels
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have already gotten so small that they can make it more difficult to use the
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phone like if you're reaching across with your thumb while typing one hand in
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the thing is that you need a little bit of bezel in order to hold onto your
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device and there's got to be a little bit of non-sensitive part there because
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skin is not hard it's soft and it kind of mushes onto it
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now this is something that's less likely to come up in portrait mode but i've
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actually noticed that it can be uncomfortable to hold a phone with tiny
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or no bezels while watching videos or playing games
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your mileage may vary though but in spite of these practical concerns there
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is certainly some sex appeal if nothing
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else to an all screen device so let's
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take a look in today's video at the various approaches that manufacturers
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are taking to get as close as possible
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now the first thing that probably came to your mind is everybody's favorite
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the notch it seems like everyone loves to crucify apple for
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inventing this and you wouldn't be unfair to say that they
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definitely helped to popularize the design but apple wasn't the first
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company to utilize a notch that particular crown of thorns lies upon the
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head of lg their v10 launched back in 2015 had
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a massive notch in the corner for the front cameras now they kind of
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put some spackle on this with a second display that was used exclusively for
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shortcuts stats or notifications
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so people really didn't see it as taking away from the main display hence the
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lack of outrage the first screen to actually make use of
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an in-screen notch was the sharp s2 as a
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way to showcase their free-form display technology
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freeform works by moving the display's driving electronics away from the edges
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and into the screen itself allowing a display to be made into virtually any
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shape a couple days later there was the slightly more popular essential phone
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and then finally of course the iphone 10.
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so why does the notch need to be there
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well if you extend the display all the way to the bottom of the phone removing
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the chin bar all you need to relocate is the home button which can be easily
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moved around to the back or the side or
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done through software without any real compromise to usability however when you
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go to extend the display upward to remove the forehead you encounter a bit
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of a dilemma the front-facing camera and sensors can't really be moved without
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sacrificing some pretty serious functionality hence the notch
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the next attempts to make an all-screen display were kind of a throwback to the
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sliding phones of the early 2000s now there is some variety in the approaches
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around this concept but they mostly fall into two types either some portion of
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the back of the phone slides up exposing the selfie camera and or the sensors
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like on the xiaomi mi mix 3 or the camera pops out on a little
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nubbin like on the vivo nex now at first glance
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this kind of seems like a no-brainer the perfect solution that just took a little
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bit of backwards thinking but sadly there are a number of
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downsides to either design with the biggest one being structural integrity
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going from no moving pieces to
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well any moving pieces will have some impact on the phone's
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durability especially if your slider is motorized like on the oppo find x
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and you're going to be kind of screwed if
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the internal motors just stop working especially on this one because they also
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got rid of the fingerprint sensor like apple
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and that's before we can even get to the
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other downsides like how would you make a case for this device and if you could
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well how is that slider going to affect its susceptibility to water damage or
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dust ingress now technically there is still time to
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see how these devices hold up but in my book
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honestly they're just kind of a dead meme at this point
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i mean they're cool but which brings us next to a solution
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that'd be obvious to anyone who thinks that people posing for selfies are a
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bunch of narcissistic douchebogs
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douchebox i like that douchebox
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what if we just removed the selfie cam then who cares
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the problem with that is that well then you wouldn't be able to take
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selfies anymore but fear not vivo's solution to this is
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what actually inspired us to make this video the vivo nex dual display is a
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truly fascinating device as the name implies it actually has two
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displays one right here on the front and another one
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on the back so the idea is that when you want to
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take a selfie you can just flip around the phone and use the rear display to
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see what the crap it is that you're doing now it is a little bit less convenient
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but i gotta say using your full fat rear camera to take
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your selfies is going to seriously help you step up your instagram game and
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what's cool is that the second screen also provides some extra functionality
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like showing you the framing of the shot if you ask someone else to take a photo
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for you so you can avoid that whole like hey can you take a picture for me and
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then they take the picture and you like look at it and you kind of wait till they leave and then you ask someone else
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because they're just completely incompetent it also allows you to quickly flip to
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the other side of the phone to attend to random social media stuff while gaming
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and some other things as well it's kind of cool but the current implementation
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is still a little bit clunky not to
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mention that on this particular phone there's this
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massive weird camera bump that doubles
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as a notification led ring i don't know i think a regular led on the back
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probably would have sufficed so hopefully the next version goes with
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that instead with all that said out of everything that's available right now
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the dual screen approach to making an all-screen device is my personal
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favorite even if there's still some work to do on the software side of things
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i've already seen a rear screen used in other novel ways like on the nubia x
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which handled switching screens really quickly while i was playing with it at
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ces and used that rear screen to provide
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extra rear buttons for gaming the issue though is that every one of these
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solutions seems to make at least one compromise whether that's a less
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intuitive experience making the phone an eyesore compromising durability or
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adding thickness and or reducing battery life because the bloody thing has two
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screens so back to that ultimate goal of a whole
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screen phone the only perfect answer seems to be an
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underscreen camera but at this time it looks like we're gonna have to wait a
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while for that now we did visit lg displays factory in korea quite recently
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and they were extremely proud of their approximately 50 transparency OLED
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displays but given that issues exist with selfie
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camera image quality already cutting the light transmission in half probably
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isn't going to be a good time but progress is happening so under screen
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fingerprint scanners like the one in the oneplus 6t and in the vivonex dual
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screen here actually are very similar technologically to camera sensors just
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with quality standards that aren't as high as you'd expect when you're trying
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to snap a selfie in the club or whatever so
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i'm still pretty hopeful but let us know in the comments down
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below first would you have preferred that we had
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gone with our original plan of just doing a normal review of this phone or
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did you enjoy us using it as a prop to take a broader look at current all
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screen display technology and second
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what do you think is the best solution currently on the market
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freshbooks is the small business accounting software that's custom built
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for how you want to work it's a simple way to be more productive more organized
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and to get paid faster if you're a freelancer or if you're self-employed
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you can create and send professional looking invoices in less than 30 seconds
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you can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks to get paid up to
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four days faster you can see when your client has seen your invoice to put an
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end to the guessing games and this is really cool you can take the whole
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experience with you on the go with their fully featured apps for both Android and
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iOS so don't take my word for it try out freshbooks today they offer an
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unrestricted 30-day free trial if you just go to freshbooks.com tech tips
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we're gonna have that linked below just make sure you enter Linus tech tips in
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