The headquarters of Vivo is seen in Sao Paulo.
The headquarters of Vivo is seen in Sao Paulo June 30, 2010. Reuters/Nacho Doce

Currently, the world's thinnest smartphone is Gionee Elife S5.1. It has a thickness of 5.1 mm. It seems that Vivo is soon going to dethrone Elife S5.1 by rolling out a smartphone with a thickness of only 3.8 mm.

Vivo has gone ahead and even released couple of photos of the slimmest smartphone in the world. The images of the new Vivo smartphone listed with GforGames have appeared on Weibo, the popular social networking website from China. In one of the images, the 3.8 mm Vivo smartphone is compared to the iPhone 5S or the iPhone 5 which has a thickness of 7.6 mm. GforGames claims that with the thinnest smartphone from Vivo is half the size of iPhone 5S which is Apple's flagship model for 2013.

The Gionee Elite S5.1 is priced at $325 and is the world's slimmest smartphone according to Guinness World Records. According to NDTV, the Gionee Elite S5.1 took over the title from Vivo X3 which has a thickness of 5.75 mm. The Elite S5.1 is the successor model for Gionee Elite S5.5.

The Elite S5.5 comes with 5-inch screen, Cortex A7 octa-core processor, 2 GB of RAM and 2300 mAh battery. On the other side, the successor model, the Elite S5.1 is packed with a smaller screen of 4.8-inch, low end Cortex A7 quad-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and 2100 mAh battery. This indicates that in a bid to bag the title of the world's thinnest smartphone, Gionee had to manufacture the handset with low-end features.

As of now, no other technical information of the slimmest Vivo smartphone is available. GforGames is skeptical about the battery capacity of the device. Since it is very thin, how would Vivo manage to assemble the battery in such a slim body.

GforGames also doubts the resilience of the handset. The iPhone 6 Plus which comes with a thickness 7.1 mm is known to bend easily with little pressure. To avoid such an issue, Vivo may manufacture the handset with a stronger material. It may make use of lithium-aluminum material whose strength is equivalent to stainless steel and possesses one third of its density.