14 DAY TRIAL // The iPhone X display, which has often been praised for its quality and performance, is manufactured by none other than Samsung, but it has one very controversial feature: the notch.
Placed at the top of the screen, the notch was Apple’s own way to remove screen bezels but still offer front-facing tech like the selfie camera and Face ID. And yet, Samsung appears to come to the rescue once again, as the South Koreans have found an easy way to get rid of the notch.
A patent discovered recently shows that it’s basically possible to remove the iPhone X notch by simply drilling holes in the display and this way allow tech like the camera to go through.
Samsung says in the patent documentation that this method would technically allow the creation of an edge-to-edge display the real way. This means no bezels, no notch, no nothing, as all the hardware would be directly integrated into the display with the said holes.
Still in patent stage
While this sounds good on paper, it doesn’t necessarily mean everything would work flawlessly. There still are questions to address, and one of them concerns whether there would be any inactive parts on the screen in those areas where holes would be drilled for the hardware.
As with everything that’s still in patent stage, there’s no guarantee such tech would ever make it to production, and the documents show that Samsung actually filed them in South Korea in July and October 2016.
While this could make many believe that Samsung actually abandoned the idea of drilling holes into its screens, it could also be a sign that the company had enough time to work on such technology behind the closed doors and bringing it to mass production could happen sooner than believed.
It remains to be seen how future Samsung models will look, but in the meantime all iPhone models will get the notch with this year’s generation, as Apple wants to make Face ID available on all devices.
