What's the Point of Smartphone Notches?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
898 words · ~4 min read
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Click the subscribe button, then enable notifications with the bell icon, so you won't miss any
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future videos.
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Oh, hey, what's that thing?
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Well, I guess if you're watching this on an iPhone X, you're used to it by now.
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But for the rest of you, this is probably pretty annoying.
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So what exactly is the point of the notch, which is either suddenly in vogue or a huge
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source of complaints, depending on your opinion?
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Is Apple just trying to tell us all, yeah, we're Apple, and we can do whatever we want
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with our gadgets, just like we do with a headphone jack?
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Well, not exactly.
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In fact, the lesser-known Essential Phone was actually the first modern smartphone to
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feature a notch for its front-facing camera, though it's quite a bit smaller than the one
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you'd find on the iPhone X.
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Released just two months before the iPhone X, the Essential Phone was our first look
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at how a phone designer might try to fill as much of the front of the device as possible
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with actual screen instead of bezels.
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And although they figured out how to bury a fingerprint sensor under the phone, they
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figured out how to do it with a front-facing camera, which is now a critical feature in
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all modern smartphones due to its utilization by popular apps and, of course, our narcissistic
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need for on-demand selfies.
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Of course, many phone makers simply hide the camera and other phone components inside of
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a bezel, but Essential went with the notch approach because Android OS fills the top
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notification bar from the left and right, so the idea was that the camera in the middle
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wouldn't block anything super important.
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And they even built in an option allowing the user to choose whether or not to hide
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the notch in landscape mode by turning the notch side of the screen into a black bar
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that won't block anything.
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Of course, Apple's notch is significantly larger, leaving only two small loaves of screen
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space at the phone's corners.
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A big part of the rationale for this is that the iPhone X's Face ID recognition system
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needs additional equipment, such as an IR camera and a dot projector, that can't also
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—yet— be buried under the screen.
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So to be fair, the iPhone X is sporting a pretty cool piece of tech that Essential Phone
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and other Android devices don't yet have, and iOS also doesn't display notification
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icons across the top of the screen like Android does, making the notches a little easier to
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get away with.
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And Apple does designate safe areas in app development to prevent content from being
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obscured by the notch.
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Now of course, this doesn't mean that the notch should be immune from criticism, with
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many users noting that it seems like the notch is a bit too big for the iPhone X, and Apple's
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technology has completely caught up, especially as we're now seeing phones that are bezel-less
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on three sides — a more appealing alternative to the awkward notch, at least for some.
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Because awkwardness is in the eye of the beholder, right?
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And there's been speculation that Apple is intentionally using the bezel as a signature
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look, just like the scroll wheel on the iPod.
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And any time Apple does that, other companies, including OnePlus and ASUS, follow suit.
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And both have already confirmed they'll be using notches in their upcoming phones, with
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one ASUS exec even going so far as to say it's what the people want.
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So whether you love or hate Apple for starting this trend, there's a good chance we'll
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see notches become more common until solutions for hiding phone components beneath the display
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become widespread.
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In fact, Android P has features specifically for developers who want to incorporate notches
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into app design, so if you are hoping that the phone industry will relent and suddenly
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consider a bad idea, you might want to dial your hopes back a notch.
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