14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 10 could bring major design changes to the market, as the company is reportedly looking into a significant overhaul that would completely ditch physical buttons.
While it’s still too early to discuss such major changes given that the phone is projected to land in the summer, a new report today indicates that the Galaxy Note 10 may not even launch with power and volume controls on the sides.
Furthermore, if this information is entirely accurate, then Samsung could even kill off the Bixby key, which at some level doesn’t make any sense given the company’s recent push for this feature.
However, this doesn’t mean that the controls themselves would go away entirely. Instead, what Samsung might be planning is replacing the hardware buttons with software alternatives, which could rely either on new implementations under the hood or gestures introduced at the OS level.
Buttonless design
For example, one way to go for a buttonless design would be something similar to HTC’s squeeze system, which makes it possible to launch the camera by simply squeezing the device in hand. Of course, Samsung would have to go for a more complex approach that supports more than just one gesture, so there’s no doubt that if true, such a change can become super-confusing at first.
Going for such a dramatic change, however, would be rather unusual for the Note lineup. Most Galaxy Note models are based on the design, hardware, and feature lineup of the Galaxy S model launched the same year, and given the Galaxy S10 still features buttons, it’ll certainly be interesting to see if Samsung wants to make this idea happen.
Keep in mind that we’re still in the rumor stage for now, so a certain amount of skepticism is recommended, at least until we get more details about the upcoming Note model.