Vivo's V17 Pro is the first smartphone with dual pop-up selfie cams and flash
Vivo was the first to introduce pop-up selfie cams in commercial smartphones back in June 2018 with the NEX A model. The Chinese company was clearly not a big fan of notched displays and sought to bring the largest possible screen to body ratio by implementing the selfie cam and remaining sensors in a special pop-up module placed on the upper edge of the handheld. Other solutions that enable the integration of full displays include rotating rear cams that act as selfies and in-display sensors, but these do not seem as elegant as the pop-up approach, so Vivo is still sticking to it for now and is ready to improve the original design with dual-cam setups.
The freshly announced Vivo V17 Pro is the company’s first phone to integrate a dual pop-up selfie cam, plus it sports a rear quad-cam setup, as well. The specs recommend it as a premium mid-ranger, as it is powered by a Snapdragon 675 SoC coupled with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB storage. On the display side, Vivo is adding a 6.44-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED screen with 20:9 aspect ratio and there is also an in-display fingerprint reader. It runs Android 9.0 with Funtouch 9.1 on top and comes with a 4,100 mAh battery that supports Dual Engine Fast Charging (18 W). Color options include Crystal Black and Crystal Sky.
Back to the camera setups, the pop-up module is wider now since it integrates a 32 MP regular cam with a new 8 MP ultra-wide angle senor that has a 105-degree field of view. Moreover, it houses an additional earpiece and a flash unit that works in conjunction with a new Night Selfie mode for improved low-light shots. On the back, there is a main 48 MP sensor, a 13 MP telephoto one with 2X zoom, an 8 MP cam with ultra-wide angle lens that doubles as macro shooter and the usual depth cam with a 2 MP sensor.
The Vivo V17 Pro will start shipping on September 27 for ~US$420, but it will be available only in India at launch. Vivo did promise it will bring it to Western markets in a few months.