It looks like Chinese OEMs are very interested to make headlines concerning their smartphone’s size rather than highlighting a specific technology or piece of hardware.

In the last couple of months, the world’s thinnest smartphones were made by Chinese companies like Oppo, Gionee and now Vivo.

We reported several days ago that Oppo’s R5 was officially recognized as the slimmest smartphone soon to be available on the market at only 4.85mm.

However, this won’t last long as another Chinese handset maker is readying a new smartphone that will be even sleeker than Oppo’s R5. Vivo X5 Max is likely to dethrone Oppo’s device and become world’s thinnest smartphone by the end of the year.

TENAA, the Chinese regulatory commission, has just approved the so-called Vivo X5 Max smartphone, which should make it to the market in the next couple of weeks.

Besides the high-end specs it features under the hood, Vivo X5 Max is incredibly thin at only 4.75mm, which is enough to make it the slimmest smartphone in the world.

But those who aren’t keen on having such a sleek device in their pockets without the power of a high-end smartphone will be pleased to know that Vivo’s X5 Max will be armed with a 1.7GHz octa-core processor, possibly provided by MediaTek.

The sleek smartphone may not be available outside China anytime soon

That should be more than enough to handle anything that you might throw at it. On top of that, the smartphone is equipped with a 2GB of RAM and sports a large 5.5-inch full HD (1080p) capacitive touchscreen display.

But this is not all, as Vivo’s high-end handset has been confirmed to pack a more than decent 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording, as well as a no less impressive 5-megapixel front-facing camera for great selfies and smooth video calls experience.

Connectivity-wise, the X5 Max offers a variety of options, including LTE, HSPA+, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0, Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS support.

Vivo X5 Max will be powered by Android 4.4.4 KitKat operating system out of the box and there’s no telling yet whether or not it will receive any major updates in the future.

Given the fact that the smartphone has been approved recently by TENAA, we expect it to be released in China soon, but it’s unclear if Vivo will bring it to other markets as well. We’ll be keeping an eye out for any additional details on the matter so stay tuned.