Chinese phone company Vivo might be jumping the gun and announcing its new top-end Android phone way ahead of when we expected, it turns out.
At a Chinese press conference, as reported by users of Chinese social media platform Weibo, Vivo's Vice President confirmed that the company's next line of smartphones, the Vivo X70 line, would be launching in September.
- These are the best 5G phones
- Check out our Vivo X60 Pro review
- The iPhone 13 is also expected in September
The VP also confirmed that the company's first Android tablet will launch at some point in 2022, and also implied that the company would be focusing more on a product ecosystem (that means smartwatches, tablets, earbuds and the like).
As a bit of a recap, the Vivo X60 was launched a few days after Christmas in 2020, and then saw a global launch further into 2021, so September would be pretty early compared to the last-gen phones. The Vivo X70 launch will likely be China-only though, and we presume a global launch will follow in the months afterward.
Analysis: the phone world is shifting
The Vivo X70 isn't the only phone that might be launching earlier than expected; we've heard rumors that the Xiaomi 12 could show up in November, not late-December as we expected.
Phones launching early is something that's quite startling, as for the last year or so, lots of devices have actually been delayed or even canceled entirely.
This is likely down to a global chipset shortage which means companies are struggling to find the parts to build their handsets. Phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 21, Huawei Mate 50 and OnePlus 9T are all either known or rumored to be canceled for this reason.
The Xiaomi and Vivo phones coming early suggests the industry is healing - perhaps our chipset woes are behind us now, if companies are ready to jump the gun and announce devices ahead of expectations.
This is especially the case for the Xiaomi 12, as rumors suggest that's launching early so it can be the first smartphone to use the anticipated top-end Snapdragon 898 chipset.
Of course, this is all speculation for now, but the future of the mobile market sounds promising thanks to all these rumors. Hopefully we'll see fewer phones delayed or canceled in 2022.
