There has been no evolution in smartphone design for over ten years. But soon everything will change …
Original material by Jesus Diaz
Almost nothing has changed in smartphone design in recent years. Yes, they have become larger and thinner, but retained the remnant form factor that became popular more than ten years ago thanks to the efforts of Steve Jobs and his henchmen. The situation could change. After years of declining smartphone sales, manufacturers are starting to experiment with new design elements, user experiences, and even new forms of smartphones. This experiment started at the end of 2018, and its fruits will be shown to the world in full on February 25 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Phones without holes and buttons
Imagine a smartphone with no visible holes, USB-C ports, stereo headphone out, buttons, SIM tray, and speaker grilles. A phone that feels like a heavy piece of glass and magically turns on. In theory, it looks like an unreal science fiction 'wunderwolf': how to operate a device without buttons? How to connect to the operator's network without a SIM card?
Just such devices on the eve of MWC were announced by two manufacturers: Vivo Apex 2019 and Meizu Zero.
In order to get rid of USB-C, the device from Meizu uses wireless charging, audio playback via Bluetooth and regular LTE and Wi-Fi connections. Vivo has everything the same, except for charging through the magnetic metal connectors on the back of the device and using 5G instead of LTE.
To remove the speaker grilles, which are required for sound output from the phone case when using traditional audio drivers, these smartphones use piezoelectric technology that allows OLED – displays to vibrate and act as speakers.
Instead of sound and power control keys Vivo and Meizu, they use touch interfaces integrated into the side edges of smartphones. These are surfaces with tactile feedback. When the user touches them, it is as if they are pressing physical buttons, as I did Apple with the Home button in the seventh and eighth iterations of my smartphone.
There is no SIM tray as smartphones exclusively support e-SIM, an integrated virtual SIM that is used in gadgets such as Apple Watch to connect to mobile networks. In the smartphone from Meizu on the back there is a convex panel where the camera lenses are located, and in the device from Vivo the cameras merge with the all-glass body. This is a natural final step from the existing smartphone form factor, which implements the approach of Johnny Ive, voiced by him in the video announcement iPhone X: 'For more than ten years we have been striving to create iPhone, which would represent is just a display, a physical object that dissolves into the user experience. ' But iPhone with its eye-catching neckline is not worthy of the honor of being called this 'holy grail'. The mentioned smartphones are quite worthy of this. They are the purest example of Ive's twelve-year-old expression.
The problem is that the moment is not quite right. Some of the functional features are included in the devices too early. After all, e-SIM does not yet have full support from operators. Wireless charging may seem inconvenient to some. These devices are charged wirelessly at 18 watts, which is not even close to a 50 watt wired charger. Therefore, a certain compromise in terms of functionality is likely. This is probably why these perfectly working smartphones will be released in limited editions in order to show the technological power of companies. But if you look back at the experience of the past, then you can expect these devices on commercial sale by the summer (Vivo, for example, did this with Vivo Apex 2018).
The end of the 'monobrow'
If you take a look at modern smartphones, you will see that 99% of them look like iPhone X or XS and have a notch at the top of the display, the thickness of which varies depending on the manufacturer. Apple 'invented' this element for a reason: the company wanted to abandon the frames, so they removed the 'Home' button. But since there was no TouchID technology that could be implemented under the display, Apple decided to switch to face unlocking. In the end, it seemed that there was no way to abandon the front camera and the earpiece (there was a way, more about it below). But for high-quality face recognition, many sensors are required and, as a result, a large surface for their placement.
So a notch appeared in iPhone X, and soon most phone manufacturers began to imitate Apple, despite the fact that many users violently attacked this element. But now some of these companies have set themselves the task of ditching the monobrow forever. As you might guess, they want to spur demand by offering a truly one-piece screen with thin bezels that cutout haters will surely love. And for this you need to put the front camera somewhere.
Some manufacturers such as Vivo replaced the cutout with an electromechanical pop-up camera last year. It appears only when you need to make a 'self', and immediately after that it hides in the phone case. This implementation of the front camera will be in Apex 2019.
Other companies have decided to hide the camera under a sliding display, as they did in the Oppo Find X, Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, Honor Magic 2 and Lenovo Z6. If you need to take a photo with the front camera, then you slide the display down with your finger. It departs by about 8 mm, and the cameras hidden on an additional surface on the phone body are shown. Take pictures and slide the body back. The Oppo Find X uses a motorized slider mechanism, the rest of the devices have a purely mechanical system, somewhat reminiscent of Nokia phones from the nineties of the last century.
A third variation on the design to eliminate connectors was introduced by Samsung: using a proprietary method, laser-cut holes in the OLED panel, and the Korean company was able to make a hole so that the front-facing camera sensor 'saw' through the display. The Galaxy A8s was the first smartphone to ditch the bulky 'monobrow' in favor of a less visible 'eye'. Since then, other companies to whom Samsung is selling the technology have been moving to such a display as part of a 'crusade' against the notch.
This is the Nubia X, which also has a screen on the back, it's so cool! pic.twitter.com/8wWkYfJONE
– Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 25, 2018
But the most radical way to get rid of the notch is with a dual-screen smartphone like the Nubia X and Vivo Nex 2. Instead of hiding or moving the front camera, these smartphones have ditched it. Instead, a second OLED display was added to the back of the devices so that you can easily flip it over and use it to shoot comparatively better selfies with a high-resolution camera and flash – ideal for night shots. Although these devices came out in late 2018, they will set the tone for the upcoming MWC.
Foldable smartphones
The most important trend of 2019 and not only became smartphones with a folding screen. An invasion of phones that folds to tablets or tablets that folds to phones as you like are inevitable. The perspective is quite clear: you can carry around a smartphone that is more compact compared to modern models and use it for simple tasks such as email, correspondence, banking and car sharing. Spread it out and use the large screen for watching movies, reading news, books and other scenarios.
But in most of the already presented devices with such a form factor, the smartphone in the folded state is not so compact. This is due to the limitations in battery size and folding angles – the models we've seen so far can't fold as perfectly as a laptop, they need space to separate the surface next to the fold line.
But this misunderstanding will soon be leveled. Manufacturers believe that this futuristic form factor opens up a previously unexplored scope for creativity. For example, Google has been working across many form factors over the years while developing technology to create a foldable device for the Pixel line.
Google worked closely with Samsung on the Galaxy Foldable project. It became the first brand from a major manufacturer to show a veiled prototype of a foldable device in November, with an official announcement expected in February. But at the exhibition in Barcelona, there will be many similar models. Competitors for Galaxy will be represented by Huawei and LG, perhaps we will see a version of Motorola Razr with a flexible display, released in a circulation of 250,000 pieces at a price of $ 1,500 within an exclusive offer from the operator Verizon. But this device will transform from a small smartphone into a large smartphone, not a tablet. A kind of rebirth of 'clamshells' with a flexible display. According to rumors, devices with flexible screen will be presented by ZTE and Oppo.
And most recently, a foldable device concept from Xiaomi was 'leaked' to Weibo. Unlike other models, it uses two fold areas. This form factor is currently the most elegant and attractive of all, thanks to its slim profile when unfolded and compact when folded.
Replacing touches with gestures
Details on this point are few, but LG before MWC released a video called 'Goodbye Touch' (literally 'goodbye touch', 'goodbye touch').
Perhaps we are hinted at a new phone, controlled by gestures rather than touch. In other words, you can use the device without touching it. We know that Intel and Leap Motion have been working on gesture technology with augmented reality applications. It's hard to imagine why we might need to open WhatsApp with a wave of our hands. Let's see how this trick actually works.
The smartphone is alive, iPhone as a model – no
This is a natural process: in such a stagnant market, desperate to force people to buy a new device, manufacturers will try a new one. Some innovations, such as the aforementioned gesture system, will be quite strange. But some of these trends will stay with us. I'm betting seamless form factor will be the norm in 2020. Let the smartphone industry rebirth begin. Foldable smartphones fall into this category and offer a lot of functionality in a very small package.
The death of the smartphone is overdone. The phone as a platform for design innovation and experimentation is alive and well.
Original material by Jesus Diaz
So, the future is here, the cutout will soon disappear, smartphones of the future will go on sale in the summer. I am in favor of abandoning the front camera, I use it extremely rarely, although my smartphone supports face unlocking and recognizes quite quickly. So far, the changes presented look more like muscle flexing than objective and beneficial evolution.
Which of the described approaches is closer to you? Or are there some truly pressing issues in the industry behind this carousel of form factors?