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Bad iPhone Notches Are Happening To Good Android Phones (theverge.com)
The Verge's Vlad Savov argues that Android smartphone manufacturers are copying the iPhone's design (specifically, the iPhone X's notch) with more speed and cynicism than ever before: I've been coming to Mobile World Congress for close to a decade now, and I've never seen the iPhone copied quite so blatantly and cynically as I witnessed during this year's show. MWC 2018 will go down in history as the launch platform for a mass of iPhone X notch copycats, each of them more hastily and sloppily assembled than the next. No effort is being made to emulate the complex Face ID system that resides inside Apple's notch; companies like Noa and Ulefone are in such a hurry to get their iPhone lookalike on the market that they haven't even customized their software to account for the new shape of the screen. More than one of these notched handsets at MWC had the clock occluded by the curved corner of the display. Asus is one of the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world, and yet its copycat notch is probably the most galling of them all. The Zenfone 5 looks and feels like a promising phone, featuring loud speakers, the latest Sony imaging sensor with larger-than-average pixels, and a price somewhere south of $499. I should be celebrating it right now, but instead I'm turning away in disgust as Asus leans into its copying by calling Apple a "Fruit Company" repeatedly. If you're going to copy the iPhone, at least have the decency to avoid trying to mock it.
It would be stating the obvious to say that this trend is not a good one. I'm absolutely of the belief that everyone, Apple included, copies or borrows ideas from everyone else in the mobile industry. This is a great way to see technical improvements disseminated across the market. But the problem with these notched screens on Android phones is that they're purely cosmetic. Apple's notch at the top of the iPhone X allows the company to have a nearly borderless screen everywhere else, plus it accommodates the earpiece and TrueDepth camera for Face ID. Asus et al have a sizeable "chin" at the bottom of their phones, so the cutouts at the top are self-evidently motivated by the desire to just look -- not function, look -- like an iPhone X.
It would be stating the obvious to say that this trend is not a good one. I'm absolutely of the belief that everyone, Apple included, copies or borrows ideas from everyone else in the mobile industry. This is a great way to see technical improvements disseminated across the market. But the problem with these notched screens on Android phones is that they're purely cosmetic. Apple's notch at the top of the iPhone X allows the company to have a nearly borderless screen everywhere else, plus it accommodates the earpiece and TrueDepth camera for Face ID. Asus et al have a sizeable "chin" at the bottom of their phones, so the cutouts at the top are self-evidently motivated by the desire to just look -- not function, look -- like an iPhone X.
The Essential Phone had that useless notch thing even before the iPhone X came out.
What ? Android manufacturers don't copy Apple ? Blasphamy
"No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." — H. L. Mencken
> so the cutouts at the top are self-evidently motivated by the desire to just look -- not function, look -- like an iPhone
The cargo cults of the modern world.
Removable battery, microsd card slot, headphone jack, unlocked bootloader, updates for years, no bloatware, uncapped and unthrottled data connection.
Honestly, not incorporating FaceID into an Android phone is a selling point for me. Only the owner can open it. And their brother. And anyone in China. And a cop who holds your phone up to your face. Unless a few other people look at your phone, in which case it won't even try.
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Aside from your grandma, I mean.
The on-screen fingerprint sensors already demonstrate it is possible to capture an image through an OLED screen. How soon until the front camera can do the same? My guess is it may require a sapphire front glass for optical quality, but little more.
There are many advantages of an in-screen camera, especially if it is kept small and located near the center of the screen: Skype calls will be able to get MUCH closer to making eye-contact!
More than one of these notched handsets at MWC had the clock occluded by the curved corner of the display.
Now he's starting to understand why Apple devices sell at a premium. Apple puts in the hard work to make features work nicely. They don't have feature for feature sake.
People are willing to pay a premium for a premium experience, which is why Apple makes the money while others have the volume.
Copying Face ID is hard, so the knockoffs don't do that.
After peak smartphone, it's all downhill from here.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I'm a slashdotter, so I'm somewhat of a luddite stuck in old times, for many many technical things. (Or perhaps I just don't like /unnecessary/ change, in design, especially when the end result is worse)
I have a Samsung Note 5, the size, weight, fantastic, it has a FLAT screen, no stupid goddamn 'can't put on a protector' curve. It has a home button, a REAL button. The fingerprint scanner is on the front, on the home button in a convenient location.
Admittedly, it still works pretty well, but one day, I'd like to replace it. *ALL* I would like is an identical phone that's faster, better camera, more storage and more network features, maybe USB C, more battery life if possible.
I do not want a curved display. /physical/ home, back and multitask button
I do not want fingerprint scanner on the back.
I do not want a smaller phone.
I do not want one particularly larger.
I DO want a
At the current pace of 'innovation' (read: wank factor) by the time my phone needs replacing, I will not be able to purchase a phone that matches my needs. OR the phone I want will be the 'budget edition' phone from the company, with a weak CPU / features that barely exceeds the Note 5 I had.
I'll say one thing, these guys sure are curing my phone upgrade itch. The Note 8, iPhone X can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. The One Plus 5T can join them (although good on them for the price and flat display)
Stop copying Apple!
We need analog output, replaceable batteries, removable storage and easy repairability, not thinner copies of iphones
they haven't even customized their software to account for the new shape of the screen.
It's no big deal. So long as the publicity given freely (or at least having the junkets paid for) and duly pushed out to the media lackeys results in sales of what looks like a competitor, the deficient software can be pushed out later.
Or not. Because once the phone company has got the money from the sale, what is the point of giving stuff away for free?
And of course those phones will only be a success if all the corrupt, wined and dined (at the very least!!!) journos who sing the praises of these half-ready devices hold up their end and give them the 5-star reviews and enthusiasm that they don't deserve. Which of course they will, for fear of not being invited to next year's little get-together, and all the freebies they will have showered on them for playing the game and misleading the public.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Android users have split personality:
-- Non-removable battery is bad: Few years later they have it
-- SD-card is good: Few years later it is gone
-- 3.5 mm jack is a must: A year after iPhone removed it, it is gone from Android
-- notch is ugly: A year later they will happily get it
Not a single of the above features were forced upon them by Apple. Complete voluntary choices by Android manufacturers.
There is no more clear sign of the bankruptcy of the Androidist cabals than this bankrupt theft of a design idea without the effort to provide the benefit Apple provides for the notch.
Android is dead by the hand of its own supporters.
These companies don't do a lot of in house manufacturing so they just pick up components that are readily available. Because there is a lack of market for the iPhone X, Samsung has a surplus of those notched OLED screens. This a case of companies capitalizing on the availability of cheap screens more than anything.
I'm amazed at the number of apple fanboys who've found there way to slashdot. It's unfortunate- because Slashdot used to be a decent place to get news and interact with other like-minded techies. It wasn't a place for "hip" or "power" users. It was about tech, liberty, and free software. It's been more about what Dell and Apple are doing and fraudsters (ie looking at you pureisn't).
Why is everyone so negative by default? The other makers aren't copying a "notch" (small part of screen missing), they're copying "ears" (two new additional areas of screen).
You're all just looking at it the wrong way!
Once something becomes fashionable, everyone does it. If I was a pointy haired manager, I'd do it too.
My pet peeve is the trend some years ago for very horizontal windscreens. Makes the car very hot on even mild days, and amplifies the effect of any dirt. Also reduces fuel efficiency because people need air con most days, and does nothing for aerodynamics (look at an aeroplane -- pointy at back, not front).
But once it became fashionable, every car manufacture does it. The more horizontal the cooler the car looks and the better it will sell.
Phones will mindlessly follow Apple. Live with it.
Actually it's the other way around, Apple has been copying Android phones for a long time.. The notch? Not Apple's invention...
Problem is, with how garbage apple's hardware and software is these days compared to the golden age of Ive and Forstall, people are just making even crappier clones.
Apple is now the one that is at risk of disruption by a new, smaller and savvier player.
"Oh how the turn tables", as one famous idiot once said...
'nuff said.
Hey phone makers, instead of copying all the stupid antifeatures crap (nonreplaceable batteries, glass enclosures, no 3.5 mm headphone jack, notches, absurd thinness, etc..) I got an idea for you: Copy the Nokia N900.
Yes! Please copy it and make a decent phone with a sliding physical keyboard where one can actually type and write! I don't care if the resulting phone is some milimeters thicker but GIVE US A PHYSICAL KEYBOARD!
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
I think OP's point is, nobody _should_ like it (even if they think they do). Because it's completely insecure by default.
it's an order of magnitude (yes, really) more secure than fingerprints. It's just that not so many people have tried to let multiple people work the fingerprint sensor....
Do you similarly think TouchID is bad and should be removed from all phones? 99% of people on Earth disagree.
FaceID is not only more secure than TouchID, it's also way, way more useful because it happens without conscious thought mostly. You are just looking at your phone and whatever unlocks whereas before you would have had to respond for a request to use TouchID to get into an app or whatever.
The people who are claiming it are not secure not only do not know what they are talking about, they do not know what they are missing... I would never buy a mobile device for myself that does not include FaceID. I would never buy a device for any family member that does not include FaceID going forward. FaceID is simply that much better a system and idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's more concerning about FaceID is the level of effort required to make a mask of the owner that will do the job.
I'm not sure what you mean by "more concerning" because it has been shown in multiple videos that even extremely accurate masks made from professional molds of the face DO NOT WORK with FaceID.
Apple itself stated that they built FaceID not only against faces from all cultures around the world, but also they tested against masks as well to make sure such an obvious attack vector would be denied.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please, Please copy the good idea, not the bad idea, like the ugly notch.
I will NOT buy any phone with a notch on the screen.
ANY phone!
When you are viewing photo, movie, youtube, playing game, the notch on the screen is a big ass hole.
I'm a slashdotter, so I'm somewhat of a luddite stuck in old times
WTF does that even mean. I'm a Slashdotter from the old times (read for a while before I even created an account, much to my everlasting shame) and I am firmly in the progress camp. In fact I would way MOST of Slashdot used to be in favor of technological progress until the last decade or so, when we started to see a spike in luddthargy creeping through the user base. But I still don't think it's prevalent.
Everything that you want is there in the iPhone X. Except for physical home buttons - but trust me, the gesture system is SO MUCH BETTER than any physical arrangement has been to this point. I did not think I would like that aspect either but it's just way better having no home button at all. FaceID is also WAY better than TouchID in all respects.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was about tech, liberty, and free software
It still is - that's why Apple has been on Slashdot so much in recent years.
They've always been advancing tech (like being at the forefront of getting rid of the floppy, getting rid of the CD drive, advancing USB-A, now advancing USB-C). Now it's FaceID causing waves. Even if you do not like it can you not admit it is a technical advancement over simple camera facial imagine recognition? And now tens of millions of people are using it, every day...
They've always been at the forefront of liberty as they are currently the only large company embracing actual user privacy. Can you imagine how utterly fucked we would all be without Apple showing there is value to privacy? They were even at the outset extremely careful with allowing the user to specify what apps could get to things like location when the Android OS was generally letting all apps get by with a blanket request for all system resources up front.
Lastly Apple has ALWAYS been about free (if not Free) software, moving from a proprietary OS to one based on BSD. Moving from some crappy browser to fully supporting and pushing WebKit which MANY other companies base browsers on. Pushing languages that are truly open source and community driven (like Swift).
So tell us again why Apple does not belong on Slashdot? Come at me, Cowardly Tech-Bro.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Interesting article, but weren't these phones preproduction models and mockups?
From how the author describes the vendors' phones at the conference, these are preproduction models and mockups. That's why the stupid "notch" was not handled well by the software.
Kriston
They are having enough problems with their current line of motherboards...basically, if your RAM is Hynix-based, you're SOL.
It is a phone. You can store numbers on it. For me the rest is just eye candy. One of the first things I did was to remove 'apps' that I was never going to use, which oddly was most. ... their sales of the X are low; no one was 'impressed'. Which is remarkable as any fool ready to pay a thousand dollars for a phone is ... well a fool. I think Apple will be dipping into the cash horde they store overseas to not pay taxes, to pay dividends soon. I can't wait for them to get rid of that stupid connector at the base. A USB would work just as well and not cost so much.
I see people dazed, sitting eating, drinking and driving texting. I've seen a women so engaged she drove off the road! She didn't have the good sense to pull over, stop her car and then text. I hope the property damage was significant enough to teach her that lesson as it looked like a rough landing.
Texting might be one of the worst inventions ever. I have half a dozen text messages now; they are not important. My life does not revolve around them. Likely I will just clear the lot without looking at them. You want to talk to me 'call'. Show a commitment to a relationship.
The modern phone helps you disconnect yourself from the people around you. Sometimes more isn't better. As for the notch thingy. Doesn't look very good. But Apple locked themselves in so
And don't get me started on Facebook. Thankfully their subscriber numbers are dropping percentage points every month. In three years they will be 'MySpace'; anyone remember them?
There is a trend for bigger screens and larger display to phone area ratio. Whether that is a good trend is a slightly different question.
To put more screen real estate to the front of the phone, some things have to go. Home button, notably, has been getting removed for a while. Now the focus is on the top of the phone but there are things you just cannot remove or hide behind the screen - speaker, sensors, camera. The same things you really cannot move around much either. This leaves the "notch" solution as easiest. Iphone X was not the first with that but it was just the most high profile one so far.
Now having a black spot on your screen counts as a status symbol. Coming up next: pyrite-plated anything.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
https://imgflip.com/i/25reri?l...
OK I'm curious enough to ask, but too lazy to care if Google doesn't give me an immediate answer (seriously, I googled "notch" and most of the results were clickbait or about Markus Persson). So WTF is a notch?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
each of them more hastily and sloppily assembled than the next.
THAN. THE. LAST.
You sound like a fucking moron when you say it wrong. "...(comparative) than the next..." implies a DECREASING successive amount of whatever the referent property is. "Each more exciting than the next!" means that as time goes on, each successive next one is LESS exciting than the previous. It's like "I could care less." COULD YOU? Well, that means you must at least care a little bit, or else you'd say, "I COULDN'T care less," indicating that you could NOT in fact care less, on account of not caring at all.
This may of course strike you as pedantic, grammar-NAZI bullshit, but fuck you, I'm trying to help you not sound like you're a fucking moron, okay? You're welcome.
N/T
Here we see a brilliant strategy by Apple: put a useless "feature" into a phone, watch all the Chinese manufactures rush to copy that feature, then discontinue your own phone with that useless feature and leave the copycats with millions of units they can't sell! How many months before Apple ships the replacement for the iPhone X, without the notch and and with a headphone plug?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
... do they have the courage to remove the headphone jack?
I thought not.
Courage, man. It's what separates the Apple fanboys from the Google SJWs.
I do use the Iphone 10, and find it a great - if a bit small - device. While I much preferred my 950xl, that's useless now. I actually have no issue with the notch and the face ID. The real issue is the move from 4:3 ratio on all good devices to the less friendly 16:9 ratio. I have a Galaxy S8 as well that has that stupid ratio. It is very difficult to perform work on.
I hope the Android fanbois at MWC don't move more towards that useless form factor.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
mainly.
ALL mobile OSes today share that utter retardedness.
And the joke is that you were so stupid that you believed him. THEREBY proving the statement.
In reality, dumbing down harms us all indirectly. But since we are then stupid, wr are too stupid to notice or tell.
The much better example was "Concordski", a much mocked derivative of the Concorde design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144
Not an exact duplicate of Concorde, nearly all of the design variations actually made the plane worse. The Tu-144 was a terrible plane and an object lesson on how not to copy stuff.
... Asus leans into its copying by calling Apple a "Fruit Company" repeatedly. If you're going to copy the iPhone, at least have the decency to avoid trying to mock it."
That's probably done more for avoiding Apple's knee-jerk response of suing anybody who dares mention their name when making comparisons to their products rather than mocking.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.