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Comment by jvm | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure Andy Rubin's Essential Phone predates the iPhone notch. Odd that the Verge didn't mention it in the article.

https://www.essential.com/

…also, regardless of who invented it, it seems like this design feature is unavoidable. If you want to kill the bezel but still want to have things like front-facing cameras, you're pretty much stuck with a notch.

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I don't feel that my S8 has any bezels worth worrying about. The iPhone X and its notch is a design monstrosity compared to the clean lines of Samsung's work.

I find the whole notch design an abomination which should just die and be put to rest: By adding a notch you effectively create a software bezel for renderable content; web site developers have to deal with this. You can't show fullscreen video without obstruction, etc etc. Horrid insanity.

Have you even used the iPhone X? Myself and every person I've talked to do not even notice the notch after a short period of use. And I was initially very skeptical of the notch too. A better mental model is that the iPhone has 2 additional 'ears' of usable screen.

Compare this to the S8 which not only has physical bezels on top and bottom, but also software status bar at the top and software home bar at the bottom cutting further into usable screen space.

Not to mention Apple have nailed the gesture based UX. It feels totally natural and is a pleasure to use. Whereas any time I have to use an android phone it feels clunky and poorly executed.

Call me a fanboy, whatever. But I have never found the same quality experience on an android phone that I get with my iPhone.

I've seen it a fair bit and the more I see it, the less I like it. I have also read the web design guidelines for how to avoid putting important content in the dead zones, and (AYFKM) is my one and only response.

The bottom bar is switchable on the S8, and the top one disappears when it needs to. The physical bezels are tiny, on the sides there are none; the S8+ is not lacking for (vertical) real estate.

It absolutely has a bezel on the top and bottom.

... worth worrying about? Really? Compared to the constraints imposed by the notch?

Not only does Andy Rubin's Essential phone predate the iPhone X Notch, but he also has a patent[1] for camera's embedded into displays.

[1]Apparatus and method to maximize the display area of a mobile device: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9736383

It's not against the laws of physics to put cameras behind a screen.

I believe Apple even has a patent for it. I assume it’s never worked well enough for them to actually use in a product.

The Essential phone and the iPhone's notch was not cosmetic it was a necessary compromise. These other phones mentioned in the article are doing for purely cosmetic reasons.

Huh? The Essential Phone did it to have a thinner bezel. Why isn't that just cosmetic?

The parent is saying that the iphone and the essential aren't cosmetic; everyone else is.

The parent of you wasn't confused; he was arguing that the reason for doing it is to have a thinner bezel, and that is a purely cosmetic reason. So, the iPhone and Essential notches are cosmetic.

I agree with him, I found the use of the term in the article to be bizarre. When he claimed the notches were "purely cosmetic" I read ahead, excited to read something silly; like that the notches didn't house anything, or they were actually just a piece of plastic extending over the screen.

Instead, his argument seemed to be, that if you have a notch, but otherwise design your phone differently from Apple, you're ripping off Apple and doing it for cosmetics. I'm pretty sure if they had gone ahead and done everything the same as the iPhone, he would have written a slightly different article, where he was just as annoyed.

A thinner bezel is not just cosmetic. A thinner bezel makes it easier to reach the active part of the phone.

(BTW: Am I really getting downvotes for defending the design decisions of both an iPhone and an Android phone?)

yes but isn't that what the asus phone is doing as well? they've trimmed the bezels by forcing the camera onto the screen surface. the ulefone looks to have a chin but was able to get rid of the head. the huawei device looks to be the most egregious chin but again, the top of the phone is pretty thin.

so seems like these phones are copying the design for having a thinner top bezel.

(didn't downvote you.)

That’s looking at it the wrong way around. It did it to maximise screen space.

Isn't that what I just said - that it wasn't cosmetic and it was a necessary compromise. If they wanted to maximize both functionality and screen size?

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