The second half of the year will bring us a variety of high-end smartphones, including Apple’s brand new iPhone 11 phones, as well as many Android flagships. The Galaxy Note 10 will be the first one to hit stores in August, with the Pixel 4, Huawei Mate 30 Pro, and OnePlus 7T set to arrive in the fall. That’s on top of all the other flagships coming from other Chinese smartphone makers, some of which won’t be easy to find in some markets. With that in mind, an industry insider’s claim that bezels are getting even smaller than before in the second half of the year is definitely interesting.
Ice Universe, who teased smartphone design innovations for the second half of the year before, said on Twitter that phones featuring larger screen curvatures will have bezels of less than 1mm this year, offering the following mockup:
Due to the curved screen with a larger curvature, in the second half of the year, the bezel of some phones will be less than 1mm, which will surpass any previous mobile phone. pic.twitter.com/EHSLXGnJyb
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) June 27, 2019
Just because he mentioned an iconic Samsung design element, curved screen edges, it doesn’t necessarily mean the leaker is referring to the new Note 10. The render above looks like the Note 10 renders that we’ve seen before if we ignore the absence of the hole-punch display, but Samsung isn’t the only vendor making smartphones with curved edges.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro might feature curved edges of its own if it follows the design of its predecessor. The same goes for the OnePlus 7T Pro, considering that the OnePlus 7 Pro was the first OnePlus phone to ship with curved edges this year. Also, it’s unclear whether Ice is referring to all bezels or just the side ones. Android handset makers haven’t exactly been able to replicate Apple’s tiny, uniform, bezels on the iPhone X phones, and that’s because it may have been too costly to replicate the screen-bending tech that makes it possible.
Even the Galaxy S10, which features even smaller top and bottom bezels, still has a slightly bigger chin than the iPhone XS.
Not to mention that a larger curvature on phones might come with an unwanted side effect, an increased risk of cracking the display during accidental drops.
On the other hand, just earlier this week we saw the world’s first phone with a camera under the screen, a design innovation that will force smartphone makers to reduce all bezels, now that they don’t have to compromise on the selfie camera design. Could Oppo drop a phone with under-screen camera and tiny bezels by the end of 2019?
The leaker, sadly, hasn’t offered any examples to back up his claims, so we’ll just have to wait and see what these sub 1mm bezels will look like.
