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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

Wait, are you saying its notch is better than the iPhone's? I must confess I haven't considered the possibility that the form and size of the notch could be a differentiator. I thought the notch is a design dead-end if there ever was one, but maybe Apple are on to something; after all Apple sure knows a hell of a lot more about design trade-offs than me.

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Typing from an essential, the notch is not really a design plus but more of a compromise to giving the user full emersive experience in phone viewing. It is to get the screen into the rounded corners. The front camera is like saying ... Fine!

Apple does this really well by minimizing the thickness of the notch, filling all four corners with screen, and creating UI concepts that could blissfully integrate the weird screen shape.

I really really really hope this is a dead end we will wake up from.

Right now I feel this is more about everybody copying Apple because let's be honest, this is what many OEMs do ..

Is it really worth not having stereo front facing speakers and having to add a hole on the screen in order to have it kinda cover the whole front of the phone ?

Am I the only one that looks at the front design of the phone once or twice during the first week and then focus on the content, not the slight chrome around it ?

Once you've experienced it, it's hard to go back to a phone that doesn't have it.

Can you explain why? What benefit does it have? It is there to house a part which they weren't able to place anywhere else? Or is there really something that the notch "does"?

It's the immersiveness of a bezel-less display. It might not affect everyone as strongly, but for me, other phones now feel constricting.

I don't know, Samsung's S6/S7/S8/S9 has had edge-to-edge displays for years as well (in the horizontal dimension at least) without a notch. I'm guessing I need to check-out in a shop for myself.

I find vertical real estate so much more valuable, and just feels more freeing to have that extra space.

@darkersid : wow, this sounds so weird to me. If anything, this hole in the screen distracts from any immersion and constantly reminds me of the chrome of what I am looking at whereas I usually completely stop noticing the chrome of my phone after one week of use.

Yeah it really is nonintuitive, but it's been my experience. It's almost like seeing the notch there reminds me of the space around it.

Do you have an essential too?

I'm not wild about the notch, but to be fair, the iPhone X is the only phone without any "chin" on the lower bezel which probably gives more of an immersive feel despite the assymetry of the notch at the top.

The Android OEMs are copying the top notch without removing the chin, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's very difficult to fill the the bottom corners with screen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/70g52z/why_does_the_...

The weird thing about the notch is that it's really obvious that Apple made a compromise due to constraints. They're likely to do some next level technology investment to get rid of it, and it's going to leave their competitors bamboozled once again.

Creating an engineering problem due to ambitious design, then soaking in the industry scorn and praise, then solving that problem with something new and great is Apples wheelhouse. Competitors who don't see this pattern are doomed.

Any examples of this happening earlier?

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