Vivo unveiled the world's first smartphone with an in-display fingerprint sensor at CES 2018 earlier this month and announced that it will be launching it for the public very soon.
Now, the Chinese smartphone maker has gone ahead and launched the Vivo X20 Plus UD in its home country on January 24. The much-anticipated smartphone is up for pre-orders in China and will go on sale starting February 1 with a price tag of CNY 3,598 (approx. Rs 36,100).
The Vivo X20 Plus UD was recently spotted on Chinese certification site TENAA which suggested its launch was quite imminent. The X20 Plus UD features the first-ever in-display fingerprint sensor, also called an under-display fingerprint sensor, which was earlier rumoured to come with the iPhone X, and later the Samsung Galaxy S9, but Vivo outbid both Apple and Samsung to launch one of the most anticipated smartphone features in recent times.
The X20 Plus UD is a special variant of the original Vivo X20 Plus that was launched in September last year and employs an AMOLED display equipped with an optical under-display fingerprint sensor called Clear ID which Vivo jointly developed with Synaptics. The sensor is a transparent piece of technology embedded underneath the display that reads your fingerprint when you place your finger at the bottom centre of the display which lights up with a matrix-like effect.
Also read: Xiaomi tipped to use Apple iPhone 6S' 3D Touch-like display technology in future devices
The technology is very new and may not be as fast as the latest traditional fingerprint sensors, but it is touted to unlock the phone in a matter of milliseconds and can detect fingerprints even under thick layers of glass up to 1.5mm thick, meaning that it can work even with a screen protector applied on the phone.
More than anything else, the in-display fingerprint sensor is mainly developed as a replacement for the existing fingerprint sensor which usually resides under the home button of at the rear of the device. And, it does help the cause of truly bezel-less smartphones going into the future.
Having said that, the technology seems to have other manufacturers excited as well and Synaptics is aiming to produce as many as 70 million units of its under-display fingerprint sensors this year.
Coming back to the Vivo X20 Plus UD, it sports a 6.43-inch AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution with 2160x1080 pixels resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. The device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 octa-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz and paired with 4GB of RAM. The smartphone comes with 128GB of internal storage that is further expandable via microSD card up to 256GB.
In terms of the camera, the Vivo X20 Plus UD sports a dual camera setup on the rear with a 12MP primary sensor with f/1.8 aperture and a 5MP secondary sensor. The front-facing camera is a 12MP unit with f/2.0 aperture lens. The front cam also features face recognition for face unlocking.
The dual-SIM device comes with 4G VoLTE support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, A-GPS, Miro USB OTG and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The Vivo X20 Plus UD runs Android 7.1 out of the box and is backed by a beefy 3,900mAh battery. The handsets 165.2mm tall, 80mm wide and is just 7.35mm thick. It weighs in at 183.1 grams.
The device comes in only a single colour combination – black with golden frame.
Vivo X20 Plus UD availability
As mentioned before, the Vivo X20 Plus UD has been listed for pre-orders on Vivo's online store in China. However, Vivo is yet to make an official announcement regarding its global availability including in India.
