There are new curved display smartphones in town, and they’re not the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge . Chinese manufacturer Vivo announced its Xplay5 and Xplay5 Elite smartphones Wednesday with some interesting specifications.
Not only is the Xplay5 Elite the first smartphone on the market featuring 6GB of RAM, but it is also one of the first non-Samsung smartphones to feature the once-exclusive curved Edge Display.
The Xplay5 Elite also features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip, a 5.43-inch display, 128GB of internal storage, a 16-megapixel rear camera and 8-megapixel front camera, a 3,600mAh battery, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS and a rear panel fingerprint scanner. The device will sell for 4,288 RMB ($655) when it launches March 8, with China as its main market. There is no word on whether the device will be available outside of China.
The more mid-range Xplay5 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chip, 4GB of RAM and Android 5.1 Lollipop among other features shared with the Elite model. The device will sell for 3,698 RMB ($565).
The Vivo Xplay5 launch follows news indicating that Samsung had plans to sell its curved display technology to other Android manufacturers, particular Chinese smartphone makers like Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi.
Huawei and Xiaomi are expected to release their own curved display smartphones in the coming months. Xiaomi announced the Xiaomi Mi5 last week in Barcelona, while Huawei announced the Huawei Mate 8 in November 2015.
While recent reports suggest the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are breaking preorder records , Samsung has been in a sales slump since 2014. The company hoped design differentiation on devices like the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge+ would help it stand out in the market, but has continued to struggle to recapture market share lost to major rival Apple, as well as popular Chinese smartphone makers like Huawei and Xiaomi.
Over time, the Edge Display on Samsung’s devices has become less of a special design feature for the Galaxy line, and the mobile manufacturer community now regards it as another type of OLED display, according to ETNews . Samsung is the only manufacturer that mass produces such curved display smartphones at this time.
The Korean manufacturer moved to make the Edge Display a new source of income by selling it to competitor companies. BlackBerry was the first to introduce Samsung’s curved display on the BlackBerry Priv , which launched in November 2015.
