The war on bezels continues. In recent years phone and laptop makers have pushed the limits of screen-to-body ratios, and now Taiwanese manufacture Compal is pushing things to the limit with a new concept design for a laptop with nearly no bezels at all.
The Compal ZeroEdge has a 14 inch OLED display that wraps around the left and right sides, and extraordinarily thin top and bottom bezels thanks, in part, to a special hinge that allows the screen to “float” above the keyboard.
Compal says the result is a laptop with a 99% screen-to-body ratio. There’s no word on if or when you’ll ever be able to buy a laptop based on this design though.
Compal submitted the design for consideration for an IF Design Award, and I found a listing for the ZeroEdge at the IF Design Guide website.
In addition to providing an all-screen view, this design would allow the PC to be very thin and light while still supporting a relatively large display.
And Compal notes that since the screen wraps around the sides of the device, “side touch” menus and controls could be enabled, allowing you to launch apps, control volume, brightness, or media playback, manage file downloads, or interact with a virtual assistant by touching the side of the device, for example.
You could also place two ZeroEdge laptops side-by-side and see a very slim gap between the two screens, although I’m having a hard time imagining how this would be more useful than just plugging in an external display.
It looks kinda fragile. My kids would break it for sure!
I never liked screens that wrap around the edges on smartphones. All those “edge” controls/indicators/gestures were never useful enough and the content bending due to the curves are annoying. I doubt I’d find this concept useful on notebooks either.
Reducing/getting rid of the bezel is great though. Just add a way to disable the curved part of the screen.
WOW, but roll screen is a better concept