The Chinese smartphone is the first to draw eyes to 2K before the ultra HD explosion.
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Jessica is a passionate content strategist and team leader across the CNET family of brands. She leads a number of teams, including commerce, performance optimization and the copy desk. Her CNET career began in 2006, testing desktop and mobile software for Download.com and CNET, including the first iPhone and Android apps and operating systems. She continued to review, report on and write a wide range of commentary and analysis on all things phones, with an emphasis on the iPhone and Samsung devices. Jessica was one of the first people in the world to test, review and report on foldable phones and 5G wireless speeds.
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Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S5 smartphone may be the most-anticipated demo of an ultra-high-resolution smartphone display, but Chinese device-maker Vivo got there first with the Vivo Xplay 3S.
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2K all the way
Introduced late December 2013, the Xplay 3S is the first to feature a 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution on the phone's 6-inch LCD display. That breaks down to a pixel density of 490 pixels per inch, an astoundingly pixel-rich configuration.
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Android and other specs
The phone runs Android 4.3 and has a 13-megapixel camera, plus a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 chipset.
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Fingerprint scanner
A fingerprint scanner on the back helps unlock the device biometrically.
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Dimensions
At 6.2 inches tall by 3.25 inches wide by 0.34-inch thick, the Xplay 3S is tall, but slim.
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Front-facing camera
The Xplay 3S' 5-megapixel front-facing camera is among the highest resolutions available on the market today for dedicated selfies. Vivo has added an OS layer to expand the usually limited feature set for this kind of shot.
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Extras
Like the front-facing native camera options, Vivo has built onto Android with some of its own software tricks. Take "location magic," for instance, which uses GPS coordinates and the cloud to help navigate you to appointments on time based on traffic flow. It isn't clear if this is tied to Google Now or if it represents Vivo's ground-up coding.
