Vivo unveils latest 5G smartphone, iQOO Neo 3

Chinese smartphone vendor Vivo is accelerating its push to popularize 5G smartphones by unveiling its latest handset, the iQOO Neo 3, as the company picks up the pace to gain a bigger presence in the expanding 5G smartphone market.

The company's iQOO, a brand set up to target young users last February, rolled out the iQOO Neo 3, which comes with a super-fast display and a big battery with fast charging.

With a starting price of 2,698 yuan ($381) in China, the new smartphones are equipped with Qualcomm's most powerful chipset at the moment, the Snapdragon 865 SoC, with Adreno 650 GPU.

The phone also features triple cameras at the back consisting of a 48-megapixel primary lens next to an 8-megapixel wide-angle-lens and a 2-megapixel macro sensor.

Vivo has been rapidly expanding 5G smartphone portfolios, as China saw booming shipments of 5G handsets after it greenlighted commercial use of 5G technologies last June.

By Wednesday, 96 kinds of 5G smartphones and terminals had received market approval in China, a sharp increase compared with 39 last year. Over 20 million 5G terminals have been connected to the network by the end of March, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show.