This could be Nio phone to be launched on Sept 21

The video of Nio launching the new EC6 features a phone showing the device with extremely narrow bezels and support for on-screen fingerprint unlocking.

Nio (NYSE: NIO) launched the new EC6 today in a less than 16-minute event broadcast online, and a phone appears multiple times in the first 50 seconds, raising speculation that this could be the first phone model it will be releasing next week.

The phone appears to use a curved screen with extremely narrow left and right bezels as well as top and bottom bezels, showcasing strong industrial design capabilities.

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The video shows that the device supports on-screen fingerprint unlocking, a feature that comes with many high-end Android-powered models.

Its front-facing camera sits in the top center of the screen, taking up very little space, and it uses the same punch hole in the center of the screen as some flagship phones currently sold in China.

The video doesn't show the back of the model, and it's unclear how many cameras it will carry or how the cameras will be arranged.

Nio will launch its first phone model on September 21, according to words shared by a Weibo user earlier this month from Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of the electric vehicle company.

Deliveries of Nio's first phone will begin in late September, and the device is meaningful for adding to the competitiveness of Nio's models, Nio's management said during an analyst call on August 29 after it reported second-quarter earnings.

The Nio phone will be a flagship Android-powered handset that is of great value when used as a backup by iPhone users, local media outlet Yiche quoted Nio's founder, chairman and CEO William Li as saying in a group chat on August 28.

On August 7, Antutu, a popular phone performance benchmarking platform, said that the Nio phone appeared in its backend database.

Though Nio is a newcomer to the phone market, it has opted for a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC (system on chip) with 12 GB of built-in RAM along with 1 TB of storage, according to Antutu.

On September 5, Nio's first phone model saw a change in the filing information, with the addition of two options for the storage unit, "RAM 16 GB + ROM 1 TB" and "RAM 16 GB + ROM 512 GB".