In an attempt to give phones a higher screen-to-body ratio, most major smartphone companies have settled on a solution: phones with taller screens and slimmer bezels… often with a display that wraps around a camera cut-out, or notch.

A few companies, including Vivo and Oppo have figured out how nearly eliminate the top bezel without using a notch by having a camera that slides out from inside the phone.

Huawei may have a different solution: instead of a notch, just put a hole in the screen.

To be clear, Huawei hasn’t announced any plans to release a phone with this design yet. But Korean site ETNews reports that “industry sources” say Huawei is working on a 6 inch LCD smartphone display with a hole near the top where a camera would be located.

This would certainly result in a higher screen-to-body ratio, but it’s unclear how much usable screen space would be gained. Unless there’s some sort of black navigation bar or black border to the sides of the hole, you’d end up seeing black spot in the picture when looking at full-screen images, videos, games, or other apps.

Still… at least it’s not a notch. I guess.

via xda-developers

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7 replies on “Hate smartphone notches? How about a hole in the display?”

  1. Has anyone bothered with the paradigm shifting idea to let phones be phones and ditch the insane vanity inducing cameras all together and allow people to live in the now instead of feeling as though they must always prove they were somewhere with selfies……or allow people to be people without 20 others whipping out a phone and capturing whatever “fail” they feel will get them hits on the video they are uploading.

    1. I still use my outward facing camera constantly, mostly in the same ways I used my old digital camera when traveling, or just a convenient way to document receipts and other tidbits of information I need personally or for work.

      But honestly, I could do with a flagship phone that didn’t have a selfie camera. The number of times I’ve actually used it I can count on one hand, and that was mostly for video chat, something I haven’t used in years. Notch problem solved!

  3. Isn’t this worse than the Essential Phone’s ‘notch’?

    (I also don’t understand why people don’t consider that the less flawed / invasive notch design, given its minimalism vs Apple’s. Granted, I’m just fine with the bezel on my current phone…)

  4. Honestly, the screen size wars are the new gigahertz wars.

    I have enough trouble reaching the top of a 16:9 display, and my hands are hardly small. On top of that, most content is 16:9 anyway, and in many cases the top and bottom are effectively dead space because of the notch and nav buttons respectively.

    I also hate the curved corners- they remind me of the bad old days of CRT monitors. I like crisp edges, and I figured safe areas were a thing of the past. But this might just be a personal pet peeves.

    My favourite design is still the Axon 7. Absolutely massive bezels, but because of the way it’s made you don’t notice it much. You get stereo speakers and physical nav buttons out of the deal, too. It’s a shame it hasn’t been updated in so long.

    1. Imagine a photo of some text. LOL when some of the words are blocked off by the “design feature” of rounded corners. Need to zoom and scroll around. Unlikely scenario, but paying more for a device so you can see less of that video or photo? How stupid.

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