While Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona was crowded with high-end flagship smartphones, Chinese company Vivo, the same one that is on the list of companies which signed the 5G NR deal with Qualcomm and the first company that demonstrated a working under-screen fingerprint scanner, managed to steal some of the thunder at the show by announcing and bringing the Apex concept smartphone to demonstrate some of the new technologies.

The first in line is the new flexible OLED screen platform, which allowed it to create a nearly bezel-free smartphone with top and side bezels measuring 1.8mm and the bottom at 4.3mm, giving it a stunning full-screen look and over 98 percent screen-to-body ratio on a 5.99-inch, 18:9, FullHD+ resolution screen.

The second feature is the Half-Screen Fingerprint Scanning Technology, which uses the entire bottom half of the OLED screen as a fingerprint scanner. While still in its early stages, it is an advancement compared to the Vivo X20 Plus UD smartphone which had a precise place for fingerprint scanner but uses similar technology.

A couple of other things that needed to be addressed with a full-screen display is the lack of front speakers and front camera/front sensors. The first issue was overcome with the new Screen SoundCasting Technology, which apparently vibrates the screen to produce sound. The second is even more interesting as it uses a pop-up motorized selfie camera module which rises up in 0.8 seconds and retracts automatically. The proximity and light sensors were also hidden behind the screen providing an impressively looking full-screen smartphone.

It will be a while before we see a production phone with those features but at least we can see the path that Vivo is taking and it looks impressive.