After several years where the biggest trend smartphone design was bigger displays, manufacturers finally started to rein things in last year. Rather than simply continue to build even more gigantic phones, companies began to focus on narrowing bezels and therefore increasing screen-to-body ratios. As a result, we’ve seen a number of more compact handsets that still have nice big displays. And as an added bonus, reducing the amount of empty space around a smartphone’s screen results in a much more immersive user experience since there’s less surrounding the display to draw away the user’s attention.
The “all-screen” design trend is going to continue in 2018. In fact, it looks like some smartphone makers are going to release phones with even narrower bezels. We know Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S9 won’t be among them since it’s going to use the same design as last year’s Galaxy S8, and it looks like that may have created a huge opportunity for the upcoming LG G7.
LG’s G6 flagship phone didn’t garner much attention in the US last year, largely because Samsung’s massive marketing budget placed the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ front and center in the public’s eye. This year, however, LG may have been given an opportunity to shine.
Rumors suggested that Samsung was planning to introduce an updated design for the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ this year that featured narrower bezels above and below the display, but those plans were cancelled. Instead, the world’s top smartphone maker will reportedly release a pair of new flagship phones that have the same design as last year’s models on the front. LG, meanwhile, apparently didn’t run into whatever problem Samsung was having with its original Galaxy S9 design.
A cellular plan comparison site called TigerMobiles has managed to get its hands on what could be our first look at the new LG G7’s design. The site posted a render of the new phone on Friday morning along with some purported details about the unreleased flagship handset. It’s unclear where the render came from, and the site uses odd language like “a render of the supposed G7 has been spotted online.” This suggests TigerMobiles isn’t the original source of the LG G7 render, however the site didn’t nae any other source, and even added its own watermark on the image.
The phone shown in this leaked render appears to have a better screen-to-body ratio than anything that has been released at this point. In fact, if this is indeed a good representation of the upcoming LG G7, it may very well have the best screen-to-body ratio of any smartphone set to launch this year.
A narrow bezel at the top of the phone has space for a speaker, sensors, and what appears to be a dual-lens front-facing camera setup. Of note, there is no visible bezel at all at the bottom of the phone. It’s possible that the render is incomplete and simply doesn’t show the final design at the bottom of the handset. But it’s also possible that LG aped Apple’s brilliant iPhone X design, which curves the bottom of the screen behind itself at the bottom of the device so that the display controller can be hidden inside behind the display rather than underneath it.
Here’s another look at the render, this time with the brightness cranked all the way up so the bottom edge of the display is more visible:
LG is expected to unveil the G7 sometime in March, but we’ll likely see plenty of leaks before then.
