Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Should Android OEMs Adopt the iPhone's Notch?
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Google was currently working on a "dramatic redesign" of its Android OS -- one that embraces the "notch" made popular by the iPhone X. A couple weeks after that report was published, Mobile World Congress was happening, and the biggest trend among Android OEMs was the introduction of a notch in their smartphones. The Verge's Vlad Savov argues that Android smartphone manufacturers are straight up copying the iPhone's design with "more speed and cynicism" than ever before.
Should Android original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) adopt the iPhone's display notch? A display notch can offer a greater screen-to-body ratio, for example, but lower overall aesthetic value. It can also create a headache for developers who need to update their apps to account for the notch that eats into the actual display area. What are your thoughts on display notches? Should Android OEMs adopt the iPhone X's display notch in their devices?
If you're not a fan of notches for aesthetic reasons, you may like the solution that OnePlus has come up with. The company will soon be launching their notch-equipped OnePlus 6 smartphone, but will allow OnePlus 6 owners to "hide" the device's notch via software. Users will have the option to black out the background of the notifications and status bar if they so desire.
Should Android original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) adopt the iPhone's display notch? A display notch can offer a greater screen-to-body ratio, for example, but lower overall aesthetic value. It can also create a headache for developers who need to update their apps to account for the notch that eats into the actual display area. What are your thoughts on display notches? Should Android OEMs adopt the iPhone X's display notch in their devices?
If you're not a fan of notches for aesthetic reasons, you may like the solution that OnePlus has come up with. The company will soon be launching their notch-equipped OnePlus 6 smartphone, but will allow OnePlus 6 owners to "hide" the device's notch via software. Users will have the option to black out the background of the notifications and status bar if they so desire.
...the "notch" made popular by the iPhone X.
Really? "Popular" seems a bit of a stretch.
I'm not a fan of the notch. It's cumbersome, ugly, and requires application designers to make some weird compromises to make it work. All this for the holy grail of small bezels. I'd rather wait until they find ways to put the camera and other sensor under the screen.
No
I do not see a need for this whatsoever. Leave my screen nice and rectangular, thank you very much. Should we start putting notches on laptop screens where the webcam is next?
All I care about is if I can hold the phone at the sides without my hands triggering the touch screen. If it helps them maintain a 16:9 aspect ratio then it's fine, it's hidden by a black status bar anyway. If they want a notch because they're looking to expand the screen vertically to 18:9 then no thanks. I don't like the candy bar form factor.
Twinstiq, game news
A display notch can offer a greater screen-to-body ratio, for example, but lower overall aesthetic value.
Aesthetics are a matter of personal taste. I can see people liking or hating the notch and you can't say they are wrong either way. There is no objective way to judge aesthetics. Conceivably the notch has some potential functional value though it seems a lot of trouble for some pretty minimal gains even under the best of circumstances. I have an iPhone X (spare the snark - it works for me) and I'm utterly indifferent to the notch. It doesn't bother me but I don't find it particularly useful either. Frankly it seems mostly like a mis-feature and a waste of money.
All this sturm and drang about notches really seems to be missing the point. It's an answer to a problem nobody has. What I want them to do is make a phone with a better battery life. They could double the thickness of all but the biggest phones and I would not care. A thicker phone would also enable them to put a better camera into the phone which has value to me. I'd also like someone to really get seamless cloud integration and device and document sharing right because that is still a hot mess whether you are talking about Android, iOS or any other system. You'd think Apple could figure it out since they control their platform the tightest but they always seem to only partially solve the problems.
What the fuck is a "notch" on an iPhone?
I don't respond to AC's.
Agreed. If you want to be even more cynical, the notch creates a much more unique screen that adds just one more headache to developers who want to build applications for more than one operating system.
NO.
It's really sad that since there isn't any real innovation happening with phones and the best we can come up with is a debate over whether we want some near unusable screen space on either side on the top of our phones.
What about bluetooth that doesn't drop out? Better call quality and consistent connections? Better security and privacy settings? Better battery life? More options for storage? Or how about a phone that will survive falling from a nightstand and I don't need to buy a stronger case for?
Instead we are paying $1k for a "flagship" phone that doesn't really do much more than that $300 phone 4 years ago.
Instead of taking up valuable screen real estate, may Androids should have an out facing notch
The Essential Android Phone came out with a notch before the iPhone X. Personally, I just see this as a poor compromise to the phone designers drive to marketing bezzle-less designs that people may think they like. I am fine with a bezzle and prefer a little bit of space to accommodate the palm of my hand hanging over.
Can it? Can it? No, I didn't think so. THAT is what Android makers need to introduce - a notch that can talk back to you when you talk to it. Don't immitate - innovate!
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I wouldn't buy an iPhone X for that silly notch.
Wouldn't buy an android for the same reason.
...phone manufacturers to use up valuable screen real estate. Android makers are thinking, "Hey Apple convinced users to pay $1000 for a new phone and not get 100% of the screen (3.6%) is lost due to the notch."
sigh...
Until Apple does it, it never existed:
* Apple created the first MP3 player .... ....
* Apple created the first smartphone
* Apple created the first smart watch
* iPhone was the first to have a finger-touch sensor
* iPhone was the first to have a face unlocking
* iPhone was the first to have widgets
* iPhone was the first to have wireless charging
so on and so on
* iPhone was the first to have a notch
If Apple hasn't done it, I call bullshit that it's ever been done before.
Apple is the most innovated company ever to have existed...period.
sigh...
You know what? I don't mind a bit of top and bottom bezel. If anything, you could even go a bit taller.
You know why? Because it leaves room for some proper dual front speakers.
Fuck this "less bezel" and "thinner" bullshit that disappears as soon as we stick the phone in a proper case; give us functionality improvements.
Log in or piss off.
Waiting for announcement from Gnome in 3..2..1..
Why has Apple gone off the rails, and why haven't Android phone makers noticed and stopped copying them?
I was never impressed by the iPhone, but can understand why people were and certainly appreciate many technologies the iPhone popularized. However, the last few years have been completely absurd. The iPhone has lost its headphone jack, there's no good reason for the notch, and it still doesn't follow accepted industry standards even though now there's no reason for it not to - USB C in particular.
What has happened to Apple? Steve Jobs' departure should have been an opportunity to throw out the less optimal things Apple was doing solely because Jobs was insisting on it: instead, they seem to have thrown out Jobs' obsessions with elegance and simplicity and adopted his very worst quirks.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Obviously, the ones who want to mimic the iphone design as much as possible probably should.
On the other hand, plenty of others already have good designs with "zero" or near-zero bezel, or with a wider bezel that accommodates a front-facing camera without making the screen area weird.
When did "notch" become a technology thing we're expected to know? Maybe explain what it is for people who don't have any Apple friends FFS.
To me when I hear the word notch, I assume that means that there is part of the phone cut out; but that doesn't make any sense and I can't imagine why anyone would want that.
A "notch" in phonespeak must be something than a notch? Maybe a section of the screen that is left blank for some reason- or to be prefilled with ads for other apple products or something equally obnoxious.
The only notches I want are on my bedpost.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I mean I don't even approve of rounded corners, so you can imagine what I think of a non-convex polygon as a screen shape...
This.
I had no idea what a friggin 'notch' was and had to go search for it, thinking I had missed out on some significant innovation. Not so much.
Essentially it is a small non-display 'cutout' in the display screen for things like front facing camera and speaker
----_o_(*)_----
That said, this is nothing particularly new or innovative, was not first developed by Apple, and having a trivial amount of additional asymmetrical screen space around the notch is not of significant value. I also doubt the additional complexity and transition costs for devs is worthwhile.
If a concept already failed to gain traction in the Android marketplace but Apple adopts it later, why must Android manufacturers suddenly bandwagon it? I swear the Android space is driven by fear of missing out as much as innovation at times.
--- Mercutio was right.
No, please! I hate that notch. Stupidest design decision ever, imho.
If you need space for stuff up there, put in a thicker bezel, and leave my screen fully rectangular. (preferably 16:9 too -- I really don't like that 18:9 on my Samsung).
For me, the notch is a major reason to not buy a phone (along with the lack of a headphone connector -- I switched from Google's own phone and bought a Samsung, having used Nexus devices for years, specifically because of the lack of headphone connector).
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Sorry, but the dust from all those straw men is getting up my nose.
Until recently, the formula was "Apple may not have invented x but they took and idea that was 'bubbling under', refined it into an attractive and easy-to-use consumer product and marketed the fuck out of it"... because, lets face it, Creative Nomads, LG Pradas and Windows XP Tablet Edition systems weren't exactly flying off the shelves. Marketing is part of innovation - deal with it.
The "innovation" of the iPhone was not "we're going to bolt a capacitative touch sensor onto a phone" but that Apple decided "right - this phone is going to have touch input, only touch input and we're going to design the whole UI to work really well with touch input for everything." I know I had a pre-iPhone Windows Mobile smartphone that included every input device imaginable (touch, stylus, joystick, jog/menu wheel, slide-out qwerty keyboard and so many dedicated buttons that you couldn't pick it up without triggering something) - all coupled with a generic OS that was optimised for none of them. NB: this was the sort of "toothpick" stylus - that you needed because the on-screen keyboard and some of the buttons were too small for fingers - that Jobs was talking about when he derided the idea of styluses on phones.
Oh, and don't forget the Newton - the 1990s iPad predecessor killed by a Doonsbury cartoon. At the very least, Apple invented the funny AutoCorrect snafu meme.
However, recently, its all a bit sadder - lets make it 10% thinner, lets see how big you can make the trackpad before it gets too big, lets totally fuck up the keyboard to shave off a few mm... The "notch" (or "ears" if you're a glass-half full person) basically says "Whoops - Samsung had beaten us to removing the left and right bezels and we couldn't come up with through-display cameras and fingerprint sensors in time". Then there's the whole iPhone 7 fiasco - lets release a phone where the only feature of note is the removal of the headphone jack, rather than wait and bury that "unfeature" in a radical re-design. I suspect that it was only exploding Samsungs that saved Apple's bacon on that one. Maybe that would have happened if Jobs was still around but man would he have gone mediaeval on some poor sod over it...
...and, yeah, Widgets kinda mark the point where Android stopped copying Apple and Apple started copying Android.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I don't like the notch and don't see the point. If your sensors need space, move them out of the screen. Obvious, isn't it?
I do get rounded cornsers - to an extent. If people insist on rounded corners on their case and designers insist on covering as much sceenspace as fittingly as possible - more power to them. I also find rounded corners esthetically pleasing. But then again, that's more personal taste than a law.
Bottom line: The Pixel 2 XL does just fine with rounded corners but without any notch. Do it like that and you're fine.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
iPhone Notch
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Should Android OEMs Adopt the DESIGN WORKAROUND needed by the iPhone?
No. Fuck off with this notch bullshit.
This is a really good question! Should I paint my house red? My neighbor a few houses down painted their house a bright red. It used to be sort of grey, but it's kind of a bright red now. It looks really nice, and updated what had been a "tired"-looking house and turned it into something eye catching, in a good way.
So I'm asking Slashdot: Should I paint my house red?
This is a design decision. Apple decided to include a notch in their new iPhone. Now the phone stands out a bit more against the competition. As smartphone makers generally drifted to the same "glass brick" design (because it makes a lot of sense for what it is) Apple found a new way to identify "that's an iPhone" through a design choice. Now when you see a white smartphone, you can guess what make it is - if it has a notch, it's a new iPhone.
I personally don't like the notch. I use Android, so I haven't used a notch. But I just don't like how it looks. It looks like Apple ran out of room with the phone, and just stuck the camera inside the display.
Maybe some Android phones will copy the notch, just like Android phones started to look more like iPhones in other ways. But I hope they don't.
Putting a hole in the screen to give a "larger screen size" is a fool's errand, since viewing most video or pictures will require the user to reduced the window size so it doesn't have a hole in it. Want a front-facing camera that doesn't reduce the screen size? Then make a pop-up camera, morons!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The notch was a solution in search of a problem. The fact that a sizeable number of people people now think (or at least are willing to pretend) that a screen with a couple of weird looking horns on the end somehow looks better than a rectangular screen that's a bit narrower reminds me a lot of middle school dress fads.
I think Android OEMs should stop copying Apple, period, and start inventing new and wonderful things on their own. That’s how competition makes things better for us. Copying just cheapens the original effort.
No.
(It is requiring I be more original in my comment, so...) Apple isn't an industry leader unless we let them be, the notch should have gone down as a stupid one-off, rather the rest of the industry is deciding to validate that decision, and will probably result in it sticking around for a good while longer than it originally would have. Following the leader isn't innovating (nor is it a good idea to anoint a competitor as a leader).
Seriously, a "notch"? I think they're run out of ideas so they're just coming up with stuff for the sake of being different.
Anyone who would care about a "notch" so much that it affects their decision of which phone to buy needs to get a life.
What's next, curved or foldable displays? (yes, I know, that is what's next)
It would be nice if phone makers focused on things that matter, like privacy and battery life.
Yeah the article is asking if I want a notch, it should instead be asking if I want a front facing camera at all. I don't. I never use it. I take pictures and videos with the rear facing camera. I don't face time, face book, Instagram, or anything else that requires pointing a camera at myself while I use the screen.
At best, the notch is a temporary fix, at worst it is an abominably poor design. Developers have better things to do with their time than to accommodate the notch, only to have to remove that accommodation a few years from now when better solutions to the notch arise.
I don't want to read Sl____ot with a notch.
Have gnu, will travel.
What Would Steve Jobs Do? I can guarantee, it isn't that awful notch. He'd have told the engineers to try harder.
Should anyone adopt the "popular" (it isn't) notch? No. Nobody in their right mind should even consider it. Ugly stopgaps that force developers to do more work are always the wrong answer.
If the bits of display on either side of the notch were treated as two additional screens, the primary display would be backwards compatible. If Android supported additional screens, you could also have side-by-side full screens for, say, the facing pages of a book, or front and rear camera views, or that Nintento dual screen game thing that came out a few years ago.
Apple may have garnered all the press but it's not something they "invented". Nor is it especially something worth immitating though clearly some other handset makers want to make use of it to make the display larger.
It looks ugly, unless you reserve the area on each side of the notch to notifications so that the apps and pictures do not have access to it. That is the only condition that would make it acceptable to me.
Even though, having a full screen display impose other issues:
My Moto-X(2nd gen) has a 73% screen to body ratio, better than most current flagships (yes, I mean you Google Pixel2 and iPhone 8) and to me that leaves just enough room to hold the phone and have decent front facing speakers. Why is it so hard to do better than a 4 year old phone?
Was the essential phone really first? Says it was available for preorder August 2017, just a month before iphone X came out, and even this article says they knew months in advance Apple was adding a notch so android was copying Apple before Apple was even released http://www.businessinsider.com...
This isn't the first time android copied apple's design based on rumors and rushed to market first. Rumors said the iPhone 6 would have a full sapphire display, so some android manufacturers rushed phones to market with sapphire displays https://bgr.com/2015/01/13/sma...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I actually like the notch and I replied to you because I expect you to NOT judge me for it :)
And I assure you I wont. If you like it, cool. You be you. I don't love it or hate it. I just don't see the point of it.
When you say it fixes a problem nobody wants and that manufacturers should strive for better battery life you're actually projecting your personal preference.
True I am indicating my personal preference but I also know that my personal preferences in this case are pretty widely (though not universally) held. There almost certainly are non trivial numbers of smartphone buyers who would like a bigger battery and a better camera. But for the notch, the question is what problem does it solve for people? More battery life or a better camera has an obvious benefit for customers who might be interested. The notch? Not so obvious. The point is that any feature you put in a phone should solve a problem for a customer.
The growth of sale volumes over the last 10 years in smartphones clearly show that the MAJORITY of the market actually wants a bigger screen (screen size on smartphones has been increasing ever since) and doesn't care all that much about battery life, otherwise they wouldn't have bought the damn phones.
This argument is flawed on several counts. 1) Apple didn't present the option of a phone with a better battery so there wasn't one to buy. You can't make the argument that nobody bought it because they never had the chance. 2) Bigger screens do not preclude having a bigger battery too. It doesn't have to be either/or. 3) The fact that people buy battery cases CLEARLY demonstrates that many people do care about battery life. 4) Smartphone battery life has been one of the major complaints about smartphones since day one. The fact that other features might matter more does not change the fact that it is something that bothers many customers.
Man, it's a phone
Actually, it is not.
It is a miniature general-purpose portable computing device, that just happens to have a built-in cellular radio.
Take out that radio and you are left with a device (like an iPod touch) that people still buy and use for a variety of purposes.
OMG, enough about "The Notch" already! It's an insignificant sliver of the screen!
So, why are Android phone manufacturers even considering taking this route? So they can look like an iPhone X?
Thought all things Apple were bad. I am SOOOOOO confused.
This is like a 2-for-1, it invokes Betteridge's Law of Headlines as well as the knee-jerk reaction of the Slashdot crowd to any sort of design change Apple makes at all. If only we could rope in Bitcoin somehow it would be like the holy trinity of triggers.
Schnapple
If they copy Apple stuff that I hate, I might as well get an Apple and cut Google out.
The notch is a design concession to particular functionality, and it's not awesome. While it's arguably nice to have more of the front of the phone be screen, it's much tougher to contend that some of that extra screen should be wasted by a safe zone.
Now, the iPhone mute switch? That's something that every phone should have.
When did "notch" become a technology thing we're expected to know? Maybe explain what it is for people who don't have any Apple friends FFS.
To me when I hear the word notch, I assume that means that there is part of the phone cut out; but that doesn't make any sense and I can't imagine why anyone would want that.
A "notch" in phonespeak must be something than a notch? Maybe a section of the screen that is left blank for some reason- or to be prefilled with ads for other apple products or something equally obnoxious.
The only notches I want are on my bedpost.
In short for someone reading this far and still confused.
The idea of the notch is based in bragging numbers. I don't know what the bezel did to phone developers. I assume the bezel slept with phonedev's mother, but they hate it with a passion. SO much so that not being content so have the screen go all the way up to the front facing camera and wraping around the sides of the phone and pushing out the home screen button on the lower side. The screen is now expected to go all the way around the camera. Creating the effect that the camera made a notch in the phones display and stuck a camera in it. Now phone makers can claim their screen is another centimeter longer if you discount the whole notch in the middle.
The whole thing is stupid because that notch is just screen you can't use, no one wants to watch a video with a camera sized black space on the left side. Thus they start attaching gestures to each side of the notch. and now they're touting it as a feature. "Look at our screen it's a full cm longer AND you get cool new gestures that no one asked for."
I swear some phonedevs won't be satisfied until the entire phone is screen and you have no possible way to hold it without activating the screen.
Just another second banana
People amazingly find it acceptable. Apple should celebrate that, and not push their luck by pretending it's a good thing or that it doesn't lower the value of their product. It does make the phone worth less and makes it so that people are willing to pay less for it, but the success here is it's only slightly less. Apparently people aren't too angry about it.
If Samsung thinks they're jumping on a popularity or fashion bandwagon, they have been conned and it's time to admit that Apple has finally outsmarted them.
I almost wanna hear sportscasters describe it, "Aaand Apple marketing fakes toward suck, SAMSUNG GOES FOR IT! SAMSUNG TAKES THE BAIT! Samsung gets notch 20% the length of the phone! 30%! 45%! Oh, the humanity, 55%! 80%! SAMSUNG GOES FULL SUCK! WE HAVE FULL SUCK! SCORE BY APPLE! Fans, look at coach Cook's shit eating grin. He just got Samsung to make a full-height notch that completely bisects the screen. Dave, what do we have over in media?"
"Well, Frank, Samsung is now running an ad that tries to show how two side-by-side mini-screens are the coolest thing ever, that you just have to have."
"Thanks, Dave. Any word on the new Samsung's phone's battery?"
"It's not there, Frank. They've got the phone down to 2 mm thick. Samsung's engineers have really don--"
"Sorry, Dave, I have to cut in! We've got the iPhone Y here now. No notch, I repeat, no notch. The notch is so 2017. Stupid fad. The notch is over."
"What happened?"
"Apparently they've used up that batch of bad screens that all had manufacturing defects in the top center, the ones they bought at huge discount at the end of 2016. The ones that need a notch, so that they're still able to use the screen instead of writing it off... yes, they're reporting all the parts inventory has been used. No more bad screens. They're back to normal again, Dave."
"..."
"No, Samsung isn't following suit. They now have four notches, no, sixteen, fractal! They've got continuous notches all around all the edge-- wait, flag on the field. Apple marketing is calling Samsung's continuous Fractal Notch Technology a bezel... The referee is saying bezels are still a foul."
"Still a foul? Don't people have to pick them up with their fingers sometimes? Don't they get pissed off when they accidentally touch a control on the screen when they just wanted to touch a for-sure-dumb surface?"
"The ref's saying they're still a foul. Even if it's a continuous fractal group of notches rather than a bezel, they're using the bezel rule.. WAIT! WAIT! They have inverted the design! The notch is now in the center and the active part of the screen has moved to the outside! The dead area is in the direct center of the screen and they're saying it's not a bezel! The active part of the screen wraps around to the back and where ever your fingers randomly happen to be, they're interacting with the UI! SAMSUNG SCORES! PEOPLE ARE BUYING THEM BY THE FUCKTON!"
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"The notch" is insane.
It tries to turn a device whos design is meant to be a mini tablet into a phone. Nonsense.
Stop holding a tablet to your ear. Move those ear and mouth "matched" speakers and mikes to a place where they comfortly match for tablet use.
And finally.. Stop making bluetooth headsets and optional gadget for extra money. Deliver a proper one with your "phone" and stop making people do this ugly and uncomfy "hold it to your ear" stunt.
wait what? is this AC complaining about people using their phones as phones?
Just another second banana
Android phone makers crank many models, and some of them will copy the iPhone "just in case it is onto something". The rest will be business as usual. News at eleven.
Slashdot: Where the sig outsmarts the comment
I had no idea what a friggin 'notch' was and had to go search for it, thinking I had missed out on some significant innovation.
Thank got it was in the comments.... I had no frigging idea what the hell a 'notch' is - the TFS offered zero clues.
What's worse, none of the linked articles took the time to really explain what the hell a notch was.
G. Fucking. G.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
File this under "If Apple jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?"
Copy-paste the link to the iphone X news item with a photo that shows you the level of insanity known as the notch; prepare to look away
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.
Well they were both announced in 2017 and a new phone put on the market usually have been in the works for at lest a year so maybe it's fair to say they both came up with the idea independently. It' not a huge innovation either, rather a natural next step.
I don't really care whether my next phone have it or not. It's a minor design curiosity and I'm flexible. What annoy me are the curved edges on the Samsungs, I like a bit of bezel around my screen.
The bitch* is nothing more than a temporary problem given our limited technology. Vendors are already working on inside out displays in the shape of a 4D hypercube which will finally elevate us from a world of phones you can't hold to phones you can't see. Maybe anyway. Could be that it'll have a notch too but at least you can't see it.
* I noticed this autocorrect fail but then I wonder, was it really a failure or does my phone simply articulate my thoughts better than I do...
If you are unfamiliar enough with a topic to not understand the headline, maybe you should just move on, instead of complaining that it didn't include a mini tutorial to bring you up to speed so you could add your uninformed/apathetic "insights".
It wasn't designed to be anything but stupid. Because it is stupid.
The fad business comes about like any fad; people are also stupid. You can put the notch right next to pet rocks and the like. Just one more really bad hardware decision by Apple. Of many recent such.
So far at least, Samsung hasn't bought into the "let's put a hole in the display" or the "let's take the analog audio away" or the "let's take away the memory card" stupids, but we certainly are seeing all of those things in various combinations from other non-Apple phone manufacturers.
The design philosophy for these things is "ready, fire aim." Apple gets away with a lot because they have a largely unthinking fanbase. And I say that as someone with multiple Macs up and running.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
[looks hard at Galaxy S9]
Nope. Don't have to deal with it. Not a law of physics.
The notch is just really stupid design.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you don’t need to have the notch, for the love of all things beautiful, don’t put it in.
The Essential PH-1 was so popular that Apple copied it.
Why follow this trend? The only "appeal" it could have is the same appeal that a mole can have on a face. Blemishes are sometimes endearing.
Instead, why not innovate? There is a need for a camera capability, but have we looked outside of the box?
Why are lenses still round? There are technologies now that use super thin flat lenses or even no lens that could give radical new capabilities.
What if we made the camera more like a bar that stretched all the way across the top-front and, instead of giving us a super wide shot, created a super accurate 3D image with continuous focus at any depth? Or even a thin frame all the way around the phone that wouldn't be bothered by fingers over portions of the sensor because that could be factored out by redundancy from other angles?
An innovation would be much better than a compromise.
I have been using the LG V10 for over 2 years. It has a notch for the front facing camera in the upper left corner of the screen. The screen to the right of the notch is used for notifications and system use such as clock, WiFi/BT/Data icons. The only thing Apple do was move it to the center and allow applications use of the area to the left and right of the notch. (Idiotic idea if you ask me as now apps break if not specifically designed to account for the notch. Amazing how Apple invented something 2 years after it had already been on the market.
Note: Android apps continued to work when the notch was introduced on LG phones. Apple's apps broke when the iPhone X came out.
iPhone wasn't the first phone with a notch, so stop suggesting it's iPhone's notch..
Keep in mind that Apple would've designed the notch into the screen well in advance of the Essential Phone releasing. It's just a matter of convergent design, where two companies happened on the same idea around the same time. Apple's lead time on products is so long, there's no way they could've changed their design in time to 'copy' Essential if that's what they had wanted. (The essential was announced in early 2017, the iPhone X was announced in September, and would've already been in production much earlier in the year, with prototypes almost certainly happening in the 1 or 2 years prior.)
It's not a terrible design decision, and I can appreciate why both companies did it. Apple could've put the FaceID unit above the screen and not extended the screen up, but they decided to push the screen up and around some 'empty' space and use it as a visually distinctive feature, possibly because the home button was no longer there. As a form of visual branding, it's not a bad idea.
You don't have to love it—most people that have the phone seem indifferent, I've yet to meet someone excited by it, but why would they be?—but at least it's a choice they made on their own for their own reasons (and so did Essential). Android OEMs are free to copy it, but all it does is entrench them as a bunch of copycats, forever hanging on Apple's coattails. (The irony being that Samsung, the OG of ripping Apple off, now has its own distinct design language and can legitimately claim to be a leader in the design space.)
If I wanted an iPhone I would buy one. Stop copying Apple and do something creative instead.
Why do they buy new smartphones and then complain about battery life instead of getting a one week of batery life out of a feature phone?
Because other things matter too besides battery life. There is more than one variable to consider. Even with shit battery life smartphones bring a lot of value to the table so they are worth it even if they have flaws. Feature phones are fine if all you need to do is make calls but smartphones aren't really phones. They are handheld computers that just happen to be able to make calls too and I'm pretty sure you understand that perfectly well. Battery life is important but so are other things.
Any other reason other that they value what a smartphone does with a larger screen more than how often they need to charge it?
Exactly my point. Many people do want a larger battery. They ALSO want a larger screen. You can get both but you have to make the phone thicker to do it given the present state of technology. But Apple has only offered a stream of options each thinner than the last so despite improvements in battery tech the max time between charges has remained roughly constant for the last 10 years. They chose "good enough" rather than "best possible".
Apple did't make a better battery, true, but people are not stuck with ios and android. They just continue to choose them.
That's like arguing that people aren't stuck with the Mac and Windows (and linux) but they continue to choose them. There really isn't a viable alternative due to network effects. Technically you are correct but the reality of things today is that it is a two horse race.
And battery cases should be MY example :) To me it shows people find solutions, even on their own dime, just to get thay nice shiny screen. There are nokias almost as small as an iphone charger. Do you know anyone that owns one?
If people keep buying something to work around something they perceive as a problem then that is the CLEAREST possible indication to the OEM that there is a market for that feature in the phone itself. And because they refuse to make the phone thicker for a bigger battery they also are inherently limiting the quality of camera they can put in the phone because physics is kind of a bitch that way. Better optics requires a bigger lens.
The rest of my wish list:
Enough bezel to prevent accidental touches.
Grippy sides.
Replaceable battery.
Headphone jack.
128 GB or more of onboard storage without gouging on price, so I can forego the memory card slot.
NO NOTCH!
Pretty much all those things except the notch (which I wouldn't miss if it disappeared) could in principle be solved with a well designed battery case. You could even put features like an SD card, headphone jack, etc into the battery case for people who want them but leave them off for people who don't. The only one that really cannot be fixed without making the base phone thicker is a better camera because you can only shrink the camera so much before you need better glass for the lens optics. Aftermarket clip on lenses don't really solve the problem.
I think people would bitch a lot less about the iPhone if the people who wanted a headphone jack and external storage and a better battery could simply buy a case that offered those features. For example I don't actually care about the headphone jack (I just don't use it) so for me a case that had a bigger battery and maybe an SD card slot (I do a lot of photography) would be pretty handy. Maybe a headphone jack is important to you so you get a different case that has one. Then Apple can offer the super thin phone for people who want that but people like you and me that want a bit more hardware can be happy too.