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Samsung is making notched displays, but hopefully not for its phones
- Samsung showed off four display types that it is producing at its developer conference.
- People began to immediately speculate that the next Galaxy flagship might have a notched display.
- Samsung previously showed off the ability to hide the front-facing camera and sensors under the display so it’s unclear what might show up in the Galaxy S10.
The focal point for Samsung’s developer conference earlier today was the unveiling a foldable smartphone. But leading up to the announcement, Hassan Anjum, a director of product marketing at Samsung, took the stage to briefly show off four new “Infinity Displays” that are currently in development. As three of these screen types include notches, speculation started to run rampant that the company’s upcoming flagship smartphones might include a notch. We aren’t so sure about that.
As you can see from the image above or by watching a clip of the keynote below, Samsung highlighted four Infinity Display concepts that the company is working on. These include the Infinity-U, Infinity-V, Infinity-O, and the New Infinity.
As you can see, the Infinity-U looks like a common notch cutout similar in shape to those found on phones like the Essential Phone. The Inifinty-V looks pretty similar except that it features a diamond cut with hard edges instead of a simple curve.
The Infinity-O is the most particular looking cutout because it’s less of a notch and more of a randomly floating dot. This design would allow for a genuinely edge-to-edge design, but it would eat up valuable screen real estate elsewhere somewhat similar to an ASUS prototype we saw late last month.
Lastly, there’s the New Infinity display which we don’t know much about. While on stage, Anjum didn’t go into detail about this design, but it looks fairly similar to the examples that Samsung showed off while unveiling new AMOLED display technology during its OLED Forum conference in China that sticks all of the sensors below the screen. If these two things are the same, the New Infinity could be using the under-display tech to keep everything out of sight and remove the need for a notch.
Unfortunately, it’s unclear as to why Samsung chose to show off these concept designs. But because Anjum was discussing Galaxy S displays and how they’ve progressed throughout the years before unveiling the four new Infinity Displays, many have begun to speculate that Samsung might include a notch in next year’s Galaxy S10 and maybe even the Note 10.
While there’s no way of know for sure if this is a move Samsung will make until the phones are announced or a leaked image shows up online, we tend to think that the South Korean company will lean away from using a notch. After poking fun at Apple for including a notch on the iPhone X last year, it seems more reasonable to believe that Samsung will either retain a forehead on the Galaxy S10 or move to the New Infinity display design that hides everything under the screen.
Do you think Samsung will put one of these notches on the front of the Galaxy S10? Would you hold off on buying a Samsung phone until all of the sensors were hidden under the screen? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!