By Herman Lai, posted Nov 20, 2012 at 10:45 AM, 11,299 views,

China’s Thinnest Smartphone Vivo X1 Rips Off iPhone 5’s Two-Tone Design (video)

Chinese famous DVD player maker BBK just launches a smartphone in Beijing. As expected, Vivo X1 is an audio focused smartphone with a super slim body at 6.55mm, which means it took over OPPO Finder as the world’s thinnest smartphone. We’re saying it looks like an iPhone 5 is because its back cover’s design reminds us all the previous iPhone 5’s rumors — two-tone design and the tear-drop design. Furthermore, Vivo X1 also comes with an iTune-like UI and Siri-like voice assistant. If you wish to know more, check it out after the break.

BBK’s launch event was held at Beijing National Aquatics Center (a.k.a. Water Cube). It’s an aquatics center that was built for the swimming competitions of the 2008 Summer Olympics. And now, it can be booked for commercial use.

This is what it looks like inside the launch event.

Specs wise, it features a 4.7-inch qHD (960×540) display, a 1.2GHz MTK6577T dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 1.3 2.0 megapixel front facing camera, 8.0 MP rear shooter, a 2,000 mAh battery that support wireless charging, support GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 and WCDMA 2100. There’s no microSD card slot for internal memory expansion, and there’s no words on whether BBK will launch a the device with 32GB capacity. In addition, it runs Android 4.1 Jelly bean with a customized interface.

On its facade, the front-facing camera locates on the top right corner.

With its back, its chassis features tear-drop design and the iPhone 5-like two-tone design.

Aforementioned, BBK’s Vivo X1 is an audio-focused smartphone. Vivo X1 has adopted audio chipset CS4398+CS8422 from a U.S-based company called Cirrus Logic, making it the world’s first smartphone that has a S/N Ratio of 100dB. Noteworthy, Cirrus Logic’s audio processors and audio converters can be found in many professional audio and consumer entertainment products. It would be interesting to see how it performs on this device.

To pair up with the device’s quality audio performance, BBK also offers three kinds of high quality headphones including Beyerdynamic MMX 71iE, AKG K420 and Sennheiser CX215 for customers to choose when purchasing the device. Furthermore, BBK has cooperated with Baidu to provide music download services for Vivo X1’s users.

BBK invited four American singers to the launch event to perform a live concert in order to test out Vivo X1’s audio recording quality.

Vivo X1 is available in black and white color. It’s now on sale through Suning electronics and Vivo’s online store at 2,498 yuan (US$403). The device will start offering by other Chinese stores in December. There’s no words on international shipping. Although it’s now the world thinnest smartphone, we think it is overpriced. At this price point, there’re better options like Xiaomi and Meizu. Since we are not audio enthusiast, we are not sure if that’s worth for just audio part.

In this event, we’re disappointed that we couldn’t see BBK’s high-end version Vivo smartphone. It’s allegedly to come with a 5-inch 1080p display and Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core chip. Hopefully, it will arrive before Chinese New Years.

Source: iMobile (Chinese translated)