【Dear Utol (2025): Week 7 Highlights 40】

Unless you've been hiding on Dear Utol (2025): Week 7 Highlights 40an island for 30 years like Luke Skywalker, it should be pretty obvious by now that smartphone design is changing -- rapidly moving toward a final form where its front is just a screen and nothing else.

The latest phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9 and iPhone X get us closer to that sci-fi dream with prettier edge-to-edge screens, but they still have narrow bezels or even "notches" on the top and sometimes the bottom. These are compromises we have to put up with for now, but probably not for much longer as we've seen at the world's biggest phone show, Mobile World Congress.

SEE ALSO: Samsung finally nails all the details with the Galaxy S9 and S9+

At MWC, the most interesting mobile innovations usually don't come from the biggest phone makers, but from lesser-known brands -- especially Chinese companies.

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At this year's show, Chinese phone maker Vivo blessed everyone with its Apex concept phone -- and wow, it might just be one of the coolest phones we've ever seen.

The Apex is just a prototype right now, but it gives us a glimpse at the future of phone design. On the Apex, Vivo has achieved a nearly all-screen front with a couple of clever design elements.

First, there's a selfie camera that slides out and retracts from the top of the phone when you open the camera app to take a selfie.

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This solves the issue of needing a bezel or notch for camera to sit in. There are already phones like the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 that have bezel-less displays on three sides, but they still need a thin bezel on the phone's "forehead" or "chin" to house the selfie camera (and often other sensors, too).

As I wrote in my review of the Mi Mix 2, it's not a huge deal after you get used to it, but the camera's placement in the corner means you have to flip the phone upside down in order to shoot a selfie that isn't aimed right up your nose. On the Apex, the selfie camera slides out of the top to give you the perfect angle for capturing your smiling face.

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The solution isn't perfect. By introducing a new moving part, the phone will also have a new component that's vulnerable to getting broken or failing over time. And the idea doesn't entirely solve the issue of the "notch" problem on phones like the iPhone X, where the notch houses many sensors other than the selfie camera as well as earpiece, which contribute to fundamental features of the phone (e.g. Face ID, making phone calls).

However, it's looking more realistic every day that many sensor technologies will migrate to the screen itself (or just underneath it). In the case of the Apex, it uses "Screen SoundCasting Technology" for audio, which vibrates sound throughthe screen and into your ears during phone calls. (The phone still has regular speakers flanking the USB-C port). The tech is similar to the piezoelectric audio technology the first Mi Mix used. Again, this SoundCasting tech means you don't need to waste physical space for a traditional earpiece.

And third, the Apex has a fingerprint sensor that's built into the display. This sensor is different from the in-display reader Vivo showed off at CES. Instead of only recognizing fingerprints on a small-sized area on the bottom of the screen, the new "Half-Screen In-Display" reader can authenticate your fingerprints on a larger portion of the screen. Nothing wrong with a fingerprint sensor on the backside, but it's really nice to have it on the front.

All of these technologies pieced together push us closer towards an all-screen phone with fewer design compromises. That said, as polished as the Apex appeared to be, it's still got a sliver of a bezel below the screen (it's still slimmer than on most other phones, though). But we're really, really close.

Vivo's also not the only phone maker trying to design around the selfie camera. A Chinese phone maker called Bluboo showed off a device called the S2 with a camera that flips upwards from the back. Essentially, instead of having a separate selfie camera, the back camera becomes the selfie camera.

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Vivo and Bluboo may not ever be as big as Samsung or Apple, but it's incredibly exciting to see them building these phones that are more screen than others, and seeing how they're tackling the challenge. Someone's gotta deliver the future to us!

Related Video: Hands-on with Samsung's Galaxy S9 and S9+

Topics Android Mobile World Congress