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Comment by dean | Hacker News Reader

I keep reading about how the "notch" is ugly and annoying, but "you get used to it". Like sitting behind someone with a big hat in the movie theatre, after awhile, you don't even notice. Personally, I change seats in that scenario.

I just find it hard square claims of "the future of the smartphone" with reviews like "you get used to it".

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I don't have the iPhone X yet, but I'm actually kind of excited about the notch and the round corners for a (perhaps) silly reason: it brings us deeper into the sci-fi age where screens are organic objects with shape, rather than just hard, rectangular squares. It feels more exciting, more human, somehow.

(Also, all the various status bars will now finally have the same height; basically no software properly responds to the double-height status bar when something special is going on.)

"organic objects with shape, rather than just hard, rectangular squares"

"all the various status bars will now finally have the same height"

Pick one.

Meaning the GPS and phone call background process status bars will no longer be taller than the standard status bar. This caused lots of issues with third party apps whose developers didn’t test the auto layout edge cases.

not even just third party apps, many of apple's as well!

> I keep reading about how the "notch" is ugly and annoying…

If you think of it as a "notch", sure. Another way to think of it is that the screen has a little extra space in the form of "ears", used for instruments (time, signal strength) that would otherwise eat screen space used by apps.

This is why I think that screen space shouldn't be useable. It should be reserved by the OS to show the status, have a black background (which would work really well with the OLED), and from an app's perspective the screen is just a rectangle.

Then again... maybe you do get used to it?

Like how our parents got "used to" prior technology's "annoyances"?

I'm not saying this is a "get off my lawn" annoyance, but... I'm curious to see how phones evolve after this notch.

Everyone got used to OSK's but I'd still prefer a physical keyboard.

I think the point the OP is making is: what is the advantage to "getting used" to it? It's not immediately clear what this oddly shaped screen provides in terms of functionality.

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