Love it, hate it or simply indifferent to it, the notch is a way of life in 2018. Nearly every manufacturer has used it in their flagship phones, except for Samsung. Many have lauded Samsung’s decision to skip the notch this year but if things go according to plan they will be the toast of the industry if they forgo the notch entirely.
At the 2018 Samsung OLED Forum in China the other day Samsung unveiled how they could plan to avoid having to use a notch in their flagship, ever. The slide leaked by Ice Universe, a well connected Chinese insider, shows just that.
Great news! Samsung established the direction of mobile phone design in 2019!
On October 18th, Samsung Display invited about 20 customers to hold the "2018 Samsung OLED Forum" at the Shenzhen Marriott Hotel in China. At the meeting, Samsung showed a PPT pic.twitter.com/sYu0ORTd6V— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) October 19, 2018
The slide, titled Sensor Integrated Technology, shows not just their FoD (Fingerprint on display) but also their Under Panel Sensor (UPS). The UPS does not state what type of sensor it is but the picture does not show a camera anywhere in sight. It is possible that it is just a proximity sensor but with two circles at the top of that display I’m guessing they are planning on one of those being a camera.
Along with the FoD and the UPS they also show their Haptic on Display (HoD) which is basically game buttons on the display which obviously give haptic feedback. Following on from all this is a portion that shows they will be using Sound on Display (SoD) which will negate the requirement for a speaker within a notch.
Whether all these will make it to the Galaxy S10 of course remains to be seen with Samsung seemingly gun shy at releasing innovating technologies with their new flagships, preferring to stick with the safe option. Sales this year have apparently been disappointing compared to previous years so it may well be just the shot in the arm their sales require at this time with so many manufacturers snapping at their heels.
Most people have learnt to live with the notch but it looks like just as 2018 was the year of the notch, 2019 could well be the year of the bezel-less and notchless phone. We have expected this would always be the end result but we didn’t expect it to arrive so early in this format.
In the next few months we expect the Galaxy S10 rumours and leaks to ramp up so we have no doubt more will be revealed regarding their notch solutions before the phone is unveiled.
Well done Samsung! I am pleasantly surprised that they have not jumped on the bandwagon. I’m also thankful that this kind of display distortion hasn’t gotten to TVs.
Samsung are the leaders in most things hardware, just need massive work on software, mainly improving update regularity to be within the realm of pixel/iPhones.
I just wish they gave us a stock android version.
Aha! Was chatting to a friend about this and I was adamant this sort of thing was just around the corner. Stoked.