Google is apparently the latest company that wants to move away from a notched display design for its smartphones, with a newly spotted patent offering fresh insight into what we’re likely to see in a Pixel 4 handset.
We were already hearing that Google’s next flagship smartphone would actually include a more affordable variant. Supposedly, Google will launch two Verizon-exclusive smartphones this spring — the Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 XL Lite. These would be the first mid-range phones the company has released in the US since the $379 Nexus 5X back in 2015. Meanwhile, we have fresh details on the design direction Google apparently wants to go next, with 91mobiles having spotted a patent the company has been granted for an all-screen phone sporting an edge-to-edge display.
It would be quite a shift from the Pixel 3’s 18:9 display that featured thick bezels, as well as the Pixel 3 XL’s higher screen-to-body ratio, but of course it’s not exactly a surprising evolution. Consumers are getting more acclimated to notch- and bezel-free displays, and what it looks like Google has in store based on the sketches associated with this patent is an edge-to-edge display device that’s pretty much free of side bezels. There’s also no lower chin. Presumably, this means the handset may include in-display sensors that encompass a front-facing camera, but we’ll have to wait and see.
The patent doesn’t mention anything about the internals, but on the back we can see a single camera as well as the two-tone design so closely associated with the Pixel phones.
Being that these are details from a patent, it’s worth including the usual caveat about patents not being definitive indicators that a product will ever see the light of day. The possibility of an all-screen flagship from Google is certainly an interesting prospect, though, as there’s still plenty of mystery surrounding the forthcoming phones from Google.
Of course, Google likes to host its own events for hardware debuts and product updates, so perhaps that’s when we might get the first word about this new design later this year.
