Another port-free phone emerges

In the future, everything will be a screen. Glasses, hats, shoes, windows. You’ll turn on the faucet and bath in screens. Sure, most of us have, at best, a love-hate relationship with the things, but we’ll probably never be able to quit them.

The Apex 2019 is Chinese smartphone maker Vivo’s latest bid to go all-in on all-screen. In fact, the concept phone ditches the front-facing camera altogether, rather than the pop-up method the company has previously shown off. As I’ve noted, I wouldn’t be averse to ditching the front-facing camera altogether, and here it seems to be in service of another emerging mobile trend: the seamless smartphone.

Meizu was, notably, first out of the gate here with the Zero, which debuted earlier this week. With MWC just over the horizon, we could, perhaps, be seeing more of these in the coming weeks, though “concept” is currently the operative word here. And, as our colleagues at Engadget note, while the handset is devoid of USB ports, speaker grilles, headphone jacks and the like, there’s still a small gap for the microphone. But hey, nobody’s perfect.

Again, all of this appears to be pushing toward the inevitable. There are still potential compromises in the service of creating a perfect little sliver of a smartphone — there are wireless charging speeds and the sound quality of a resonant display versus an old-fashioned speaker.

But hey, that’s what concept devices are for.

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