If there was ever any doubt, it seems that 2018 is the year of the notch. Sure, it originated last year with the Essential phone but was made popular, acceptable and mainstream but the iPhone X. Like it or not it is here to stay (for this year at least). OnePlus are following the design cues of seemingly every manufacturer, aside from Samsung, this year with the OnePlus 6.
In an interview with The Verge Carl Pei explained their reasons behind the inclusion of the notch. It seems strange that they would reach out and do this before the phone is even official but I suspect they wanted to get ahead of the notch naysayers before any (more) negative publicity. Carl explained to The Verge that in a bid to maximise screen real estate the notch needs to be there if you want the maximum sized display possible.
What you are essentially doing is moving the entire notification bar up, giving users more content on their screen
So many phones this year have had notches but very very few of them have had software capable of dealing with it. We have seen Huawei introduce a software tweak that allows for the top section of the display (Jason is currently working on an article regarding this), the height of the notch, to become a black bar, thus hiding the notch. OnePlus are expected to have a similar tweak on their phone with Carl stating that they had implemented their notch with a lot of thought and care.
OnePlus have made the notch as small as possible without affecting the functionality of the earpiece, camera or any sensors. Their notch will be 19.616mm x 7.687mm.
Our notch, it will be there…. it’ll be bigger than the Essential Phone, smaller than the iPhone.
OnePlus have gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that their notch does not affect the function nor aesthetics of the phone and have tested the Play Store’s top 1,000 apps with it. The clock is moved to the left of the display and the notch will be automatically hidden whenever video is played — something the iPhone X does not do.
According to Carl, screen manufacturers now give all phone manufacturers the “opportunity to make cutouts at the top of the screen” so it is no surprise OnePlus decided to do this to maximise the display size. As a result the OnePlus 6 will have a screen-to-body ratio of 90 percent with the largest display OnePlus have ever used. The phone will not be any bigger than any other OnePlus phones.
OnePlus also confirmed that the OnePlus 6 will not be identical to the OPPO R15, something we confirmed yesterday when Evan Blass leaked an image of the back of the OnePlus 6.
So there you have it. The notch is effectively the new bezel and status bar icons are absorbed into the space either side of it. I also like the idea of hiding the notch in general use ala Huawei’s P20 line: hopefully more manufacturers implement this tweak.
I’m now convinced that the notch is the way of maximising the display for now and it can be functional without affecting the aesthetics of the device. How about you?
