Chinese smartphone brand Vivo has announced the X5 Max, which claims the title of World’s Thinnest Smartphone. There have been many pretenders to this throne throughout 2014, and Vivo’s attempt is not only decisive, but very innovative in places – proving the race for ultimate slimness isn’t just about bragging rights.
How thin is the X5 Max? A mere 4.75mm, or about half the size of the LG G3 or Nexus 5. It’s not the first time we’ve heard about the phone. Vivo teased its arrival at the beginning of November, and rumors gathered prior to this suggesting the phone would measure a ridiculous 3.8mm thick. Whether the firm attempted this, and met with problems, isn’t known.
Vivo has adopted an internal design standard where critical components are gathered to one side of the battery. It says this alone reduced the thickness of the phone by 1.77mm, but did make the device slightly wider than other, similarly sized phones. The X5 Max has a large, 5.5-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen with a 1080p resolution, which it claims is one of the world’s thinnest panels at 1.36mm. The phone is powered by an octa-core, Snapdragon 615 processor with 2GB of RAM, and runs Android 4.4 with Vivo’s own user interface.
The 16GB of internal memory may not seem like much, but despite the tiny frame, Vivo has found a way to include a MicroSD card slot. Cleverly, it has made a multi-purpose SIM tray, which can take either a MicroSD card up to 128GB in size, or a second SIM card if you’d prefer. It hasn’t forgotten about the camera features either. A Sony produced, 13-megapixel camera sits inside a slightly raised housing on the rear panel, and there is a 5-megapixel selfie cam on the front.
A 3.5mm headphone port is fitted to the chassis – just – and inside the phone is a specially designed, 2.45mm speaker, along with Yamaha’s YSS-205X DSP chip. The only worrying part is Vivo hasn’t talked about the size of the X5 Max’s battery. We’ll update here when we find out more. The phone will go on sale at the end of December, at a cost of around $485, but a U.S. or wider international release outside China is unlikely.
CONTINUE TO PAGE TWO FOR ALL THE RUMORS CIRCULATING BEFORE THE VIVO X5 MAX’S ANNOUNCEMENT