Last year we saw a major focus on smartphone camera quality when it comes to Android devices. As these hardware advances start hitting diminishing returns, OEMs are starting to shift their attention to other aspects of the device. This year, we’re seeing more and more smartphones released with incredibly slim bezels and this has created a problem that many are attacking from different angles. A new design patent from Samsung has been revealed that shows they could take the route Essential went with on their first smartphone.
OEMs have tried to tackle this issue in different ways. Sharp and Xiaomi decided to put those sensors in the bottom chin of the device and Xiaomi even decided to use completely different technology for the earpiece speaker. Even before the Samsung Galaxy S8 leaks started happening, we knew that Samsung was wanting to decrease the bezel size of their devices. There’s only so far they can go with this edge to edge display, though, without leaving some room for sensors and cameras.
This is especially true since they’re using a completely different sensor for their new iris scanning implementation. Thus companies like LG and Samsung have decided to slim the top bezel down, but keep the space large enough to include those sensors. Then we have Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone which eliminates the top bezel completely, but still uses a small cutout for the camera and other sensors. At first glance, this may seem like it would be annoying in software but many initial reviews say it isn’t as bad as you would expect.
We’ve also seen design patents from LG that show they may be working in the same direction with their future smartphones as well. And now a new design patent for Samsung reveals that they could be interested in this route too. Their cutout looks bigger than what we’ve seen from LG and Essential, but this could be due to other factors such as the iris scanner and possibly a bigger speaker for front-facing stereo audio.
As with all patents though, this isn’t something that we should expect the company to use in the future. It’s a possibility, but definitely not a confirmation.
Via: Phone Arena Source: KIPRIS
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