It isn’t unusual to see Apple bring something new into the market and every single company following it. With the iPhone X came a new look, with a weirdly-notched screen embedded with a ton of sensors that certainly did provide a larger screen and Face-Unlock. ‘The notch’, as Apple called it, could be seen replicated in literally every other brand’s latest launches, leaving just a few (e.g. Samsung) that spared a thought before accepting this idea.
While the sentiment around the notch moved from confusion to simple adoration, some people still did not get it. Yet now, after watching pretty much every smartphone maker adopting the notch, the inconvenience of others in matching Apple’s standards, plus, the drive to blindly copy the idea did actually turn the volume for this lately turned-up music.
Death to Bezels
At once, the whole world went crazy behind smartphone notches. Certainly, the trend of smartphones opting for extra-wide fullscreen display meant cutting down the bezels. And one can’t actually rip off the front facing camera, for the selfie fanatics might rage a social media-powered storm. Hence, it was understandable to recover either side of a phone’s front sensors – the idea that gave birth to notches in the first place.
However, it is unacceptable to see Android makers move into a space where they literally look like Apple copycats. Apple had to use a display notch, to accommodate a state-of-the-art recognition system that includes numerous sensors, and the front camera, to suffice their will to build a phone free of front face bezels.
It must be noted that the iPhone X has a build quality that is largely unmatched outside of a few Android phone makers. Apple did pull off the display as gracefully as possible by folding the OLED display below the screen itself and the result was almost perfect.
Today, we have every smartphone maker marching towards becoming an Apple-wannabe. They simply kept smartphone notches in mind and left out the rest, which is why we have a huge number of notchy-cheap phones by Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, etc. who have the ‘much-needed’ notch up and a significant chin at the base, defeating the original purpose to make the face bezel-free.
The market is now flooded with all the same design phones with a notch, a chin and a so-unlike-Apple virtual navigation bar sitting right at the bottom of the chin. Moreover, these notches stole the privilege of the headphone jack from Android smartphones. Well, it is still unclear if it was another iPhone trend being followed or the result of a relentless 18:9 aspect ratio.
Notch fails
Talking about notches for larger displays, would someone consider buying a TV with a little roundabout at the top? Certainly not. They might even transfer this disease to laptops, who knows. Arguably, the results of these notches weren’t that good and certainly, the Chinese market destroyed ‘the specialty’ with every single new smartphone release in an explicit affair with notches.
The display is obviously the first thing that attracts a consumer towards buying a particular phone. How were these notches a separate identity from the “fruit company”? Well, if you want to hold the market, you certainly need to bring something new, something different. Where is the innovation in today’s Android smartphones!
It’s like the Android industry has no identity of its own. It’s wonderful that Samsung remained absolute with the infinity-edge displays and the lone survivor Sony passed ahead in the market with the traditional bezels.
This industry certainly needs a makeover with some new radical designs. Perhaps you as a customer could do something about it. Which phone will you be upgrading to? Regardless of your pick, remember to sell your current smartphone on Cashify before you do!