Vivo Apex (2019) vs Meizu Zero: Battle of the portless phones

While Chinese smartphone manufacturer Meizu recently unveiled their Meizu Zero smartphone in China, Vivo also showcased something similar. With the Meizu Zero, the company is looking forward to a portless and buttonless design on a smartphone. Vivo Apex (2019) brings something similar to the table.

With these new smartphones, the companies are eliminating the needs of basic things like a charging port, SIM tray, 3.5mm audio jack, buttons on the sides and more. This will help the phones get a better water resistance and will bring a much cleaner design. It is interesting to see what solutions the companies are bringing in order to make such changes.

Meizu Zero does not come with a 3.5mm headphone jack just like most flagships nowadays. It does not even have a USB Type-C port for charging, which is why it supports Qi Wireless charging and the company is expected to bundle 18W wireless charger right inside the box. Further, the phone does not have any physical buttons. The volume keys and the power button have been replaced by capacitive keys just like the HTC U12 Plus.

Meizu Zero also eliminates the need of any speaker grill or earpiece as the phone uses a piezoelectric transducer under the display to create sound. While the same tech was used on the Xiaomi Mi Mix for the earpiece, here it will be used for the main speakers as well. As for the SIM tray, the company is replacing traditional SIM card options with eSIM, which is now popular due to the latest Apple iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR. There is also an in-display fingerprint scanner on the phone.

Also Read: PUBG Lite open beta launched, now you don’t need a high-end PC to play the game

Vivo Apex (2019) is more of a concept phone and the company is looking forward to showcasing it at the MWC 2019. The company showed off a Vivo Apex back in MWC 2018, with a popup selfie camera, which later on became the Vivo Nex.

As for the design of the Vivo Apex (2019), it comes with a "Super Unibody" design, which allows phone itself to act as a speaker with the help of the Body SoundCasting technology and vibrating the glass. For charging and data syncing, the phone uses magnetic connectors at the back. They will also be safer as they can act more like the MagSafe on Apple's older MacBooks.

Also Read:Top 5 Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro (2019) alternatives: OnePlus 6T, Honor View 20 and more

In the renders, the Vivo Apex seems to not have a camera up front. The company might solve this issue by throwing in a popup selfie camera like the Vivo Nex.

As for the specifications, the Vivo Apex (2019) comes with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC whereas the Meizu Zero gets last year's Snapdragon 845 chip. Both the smartphones are expected to come with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. The Apex (2019) will also be 5G ready as the phone is powered by the latest Qualcomm processor.