Because it's pointless, that's why.
The Notch contagion is spreading slower than phone experts thought
Once thought to be one of the most contagious design features on a smartphone, the spread of the "Notch" appears to have been contained. GSMArena's survey of 150 phone models released in 2018 finds that only 22 per cent have been infected with the Notch. At the height of the outbreak, in the first week of March, over 20 new …
COMMENTS
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Monday 2nd July 2018 16:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
I have to disagree. Ideally the screen should cover as much as the phone's front as possible. It can't cover all of it at present due to to needing space for a camera, loudspeaker and microphone so it either has a notch or doesn't go to the top of the phone. I also want the symbols for reception strength, wifi, notifications, airplane mode etc. to almost always be displayed. What better place for them than either side of the notch leaving a dirty great big rectangular unobstructed area below for content.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 10:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Relax, as a left wing radical I find the comment hilarious. We certainly don't lack our own foibles, and comedy should be held sacrosanct.
Reminded me of the jobs guarantee platform idea that's been circling around lately, how in the world can you make it policy without serious implementation issues.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 18:22 GMT onefang
"And I think they should extend the display to the sides, the back, the phone cover, the charging lead and the box it came in. But what do I know?"
Give them time, there's a few technical issues to solve before they can put a decent display on a charging lead. A string of Christmas tree lights is just too low rez.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 22:35 GMT JohnFen
"Ideally the screen should cover as much as the phone's front as possible."
I disagree with this. I want a bezel.
"What better place for them than either side of the notch leaving a dirty great big rectangular unobstructed area below for content."
The space left over on each side of the notch isn't large enough to hold those icons, though. At least not on my phone, and I don't want to have to sacrifice functionality. That makes the notch an actively undesirable "feature" to me that would absolutely stop me from buying the phone.
Also, it's highly irritating from an aesthetic point of view, although that's a subjective thing.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 07:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
"I disagree with this. I want a bezel." ......
Bezel's have almost been eliminated from modern TV's. People want a large TV screen not a large TV with a small screen in the middle of a fat bezel that seems to be there for no reason. It used to be where the screen illumination was housed. As technical advances allowed the bezel to shrink towards nothing people chose models with little or no bezel.
Are phones going to be any different? A bezel will provide some mechanical protection to the screen when the phone is dropped, so it has "some" value. It it hard to see why a fat bezel is needed top and bottom while a narrow bezel at the sides suffices. People like big screens on phones, but don't like big phones. Screens that cover as large as possible area of a phones front surface address this desire.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 08:32 GMT snozdop
> It it hard to see why a fat bezel is needed top and bottom while a narrow bezel at the sides suffices.
Isn't it obvious? You generally don't have required hardware (front-facing camera, ear speaker and proximity sensor, and the once common hardware home button) in the narrow side bezels do you?
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 08:44 GMT DropBear
Well guess what I want a reasonable bezel too. Aesthetics aside (which are murder on my OCD requiring neat, straight and symmetrical things) it's annoying enough never quite knowing whether just grabbing or holding my (currently quite traditionally bezel-ful) phone on its sides will result in activating something accidentally - or quite the opposite, blocking an intentional slide because the phone senses my hand near the edge and it thinks I'm "holding" the slide...
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 09:31 GMT juice
And as a result...
>Bezel's have almost been eliminated from modern TV's. People want a large TV screen not a large TV with a small screen in the middle of a fat bezel that seems to be there for no reason. It used to be where the screen illumination was housed. As technical advances allowed the bezel to shrink towards nothing people chose models with little or no bezel.
The move to thin, bezel-free TVs resulted in the creation of a new market: the soundbar. Because it's very hard to get good sound out of something which is as thin and borderless as a modern TV. So arguably, they've actually lost functionality as a result of the drive for form over function.
Plus, there's a fundamental difference between a TV and a mobile phone. The former sits on a cabinet (or hangs on a wall); the other has to be held to be used. With large, capacitive triggering sausage fingers.
As such, with modern thin bezels, it's becoming increasingly easy to confuse the phone by touching multiple points on the screen.
My last phone was the Samsung S7 Edge with it's effectively bezel-free sides. I ended up putting it in a case - mostly for protection, but also because it was very difficult to hold it in both hands for photography: if your fingers touched the edges, it would refuse to recognise touches on the shutter button.
My current phone is an LG V30, and while it's not as bad for this, all too often the phone decides that I wanted to change the zoom level rather than take the photo.
So yeah: thinner bezels look nice, but please let sanity prevail!
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 14:10 GMT Charlie Clark
Bezel's have almost been eliminated from modern TV's.
And this is a relevant comparison because…?
Almost all devices that we hold or pick up have bezels: phones, watches, books, etc. The bezel is as much a design feature as anything else. Otherwise everything becomes the interface and this inevitably leads to mistakes.
Everytime I hand my phone to my girlfriend to look at something she invariably presses one of the soft-keys by mistake. Something she almost certainly wouldn't do if the phone had enough tactile buttons.
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Wednesday 4th July 2018 01:09 GMT borkbork
Who picks up their TV?
The bezel on a phone prevents fingers from accidentally touching the screen, a problem not normally encountered during normal TV use.
People choose a phone based on many factors, the most common being "does the shop have it?" and "have I heard of it?". Popularity is not a good measure of practicality.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 10:12 GMT howieb2001
"I disagree with this. I want a bezel."
Music to my ears. I thought I was the only one left who preferred bezels. I'm not an Apple fan but the design of their "Plus" phones with a big enough screen and plenty of room for a dirty great battery is fine for me. A poncey looking device with a ridiculously high-res screen is not a lot of use when it's run out of juice.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 15:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
> The space left over on each side of the notch isn't large enough to hold those icons, though.
The iPhone X and Asus Zenfone 5 literally put those icons on either side of the notch. So they obviously do fit.
Not sure if external links are allowed... but check here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4aRt3Y_7X91bQ2hVIKMh0dWO9nk=/0x0:2040x1360/920x613/filters:focal(781x497:1107x823):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58897111/vpavic_180225_2340_0110.0.jpg
I dislike how they allow the phone background to extend up there though, making the notch obvious. They should do a black background so the notch is obscured.
The other issue is the status bar is also used to scroll notifications (not as common anymore I suppose) and the middle being not-a-screen breaks that. So you'd need a notification bar below that potentially.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 22:09 GMT JohnFen
"The iPhone X and Asus Zenfone 5 literally put those icons on either side of the notch. So they obviously do fit"
Different people have a different number of icons. The ones I consider essential nearly fill the entire width of the screen. There's no way they'd fit if there were less space, which means I'd have to get rid of some, which means that I'm losing useful functionality.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 18:16 GMT Little Mouse
"Because it's pointless..."
Not from a marketing perspective, it's not. It's a design feature that's also a fad, and hence will date very quickly.
And in the fickle world of phone-fashion, that means lots of users will "need" to replace their crappy old Notch phones with newer, more modern-looking models.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 17:50 GMT bazza
Re: Charge by wire
If rather have the wireless charging. Bloody tired of having the usb port fail after a couple of years or get so full of fluff they might as well be broken.
Wireless charging has one big drawback. Try using your phone whilst charging. If you mobie is flat and you urgently want to use it, you're basically stuck hunched over some stupid flat thing rather than being at the end of a cable of one's choosing.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 21:33 GMT Orv
Re: Charge by wire
It also means having to try to find a mobile dash mount that's compatible with whatever random charging standard the phone uses, and then hoping it can transfer enough power to operate the screen, GPS, and streaming music app simultaneously. (This is over 1.5A on some phones I've had.)
I had wireless charging on my Nexus 4 and I can't say I was impressed. It never worked reliably. It would just kick in and out of charging mode.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 22:17 GMT Law
Re: Charge by wire
"Try using your phone whilst charging. If you mobie is flat and you urgently want to use it, you're basically stuck hunched over some stupid flat thing"
Or use your Bluetooth headphones... Or speaker phone... Or message them. :)
Personally though, I'm happy with fast charging over usb c... then again, my phone normally has 70% charge at the end of the day so maybe I'm not the target audience anymore.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 14:50 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Charge by wire
I don't see the point of wireless charging either, and the inefficiency sort of pains me too. So I want cables, as sometimes that's just the easiest way.
However I have seen phone connectors break. We had a batch of work iPhone 5s, and had 50% of the connectors fail, but I presume (hope!) that was just a duff batch. Although a bunch of them also had weird hardware failures within 2 years, mostly involving the battery charging / power level system.
Fluff can be annoying too. My Lumia 735 is great, because you can get the back off to clean it. But I've had to defluff various friends' badly designed phones - with a torch, magnifying glass and jewellers screwdrivers (as they were the only thing small enough to get into the gaps).
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Wednesday 4th July 2018 10:27 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: Charge by wire
I don't see the point of wireless charging
Use in a domestic setting might be moot, but there are plenty of settings where it makes a lot of sense, especially public spaces where charging is provided as a matter of courtesy such as airport lounges. The cabling for charging mats is simpler and less fragile than providing more powerpoints, though obviously USB-ports are also good if also a potential security risk.
If I'm travelling for any period where I think I need a device while it's charging I use a powerbank.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 23:54 GMT JohnFen
Re: Charge by wire
"Wireless charging has one big drawback."
It has another big drawback as well -- wireless charging is only about 75-80% efficient (best case), so 20-25% of the electricity it's drawing is wasted. That might not sound so bad when you're thinking about a single charger, but if you anticipate a day when everyone is doing it, the loss is absolutely horrible.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 18:40 GMT onefang
Re: Charge by wire
"wireless charging is only about 75-80% efficient"
Which is a big problem for me, I charge my phones from a solar powered battery, and it's the middle of winter on this side of the planet. At this time of year, due to the position of the large house next door relative to the only useful place I can hang my small solar panel out of a window, I don't get much sun past 3 PM, none at all past 4 PM. During summer, the sun sets further south, where there is empty street, so I get lots of strong sun until the late sunset. So this time of year I sometimes have to be careful with my phone power usage, especially if there's lots of cloud. Wireless is out, too much power loss, I don't like it anyway for the reasons others have pointed out above.
If I was living at the north end of the building, this would not be a problem. I have to move in the next two months, sun position in winter will be one of the selection criteria for the new place.
I have successfully kept three phones entirely solar powered using my little panel and battery for several years. The last two, the only time they where not solar charged was at the factory, they had a charge in them when I bought them new. The same with any Bluetooth devices I use with them.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 02:25 GMT TReko
Re: Charge by wire
Wireless charging has a second drawback - it is inefficient, and the coils in the phone produce a decent amount of heat. Heat which reduces battery life.
Although, with user-replaceable batteries being a thing of the past, I guess Apple and Samsung make more money when the user has to upgrade their phone because of a cooked battery?
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 15:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Charge by wire
> Try using your phone whilst charging.
If I'm using the phone and not using the PHONE, it is pretty easy. The charging docks have flat and upright options.
For the phone itself, speakerphone or a headset is the best bet. I've got some Jabra headphones with a built in mic that work well around the house. Bit bulky for travel though.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 07:06 GMT david bates
Re: Charge by wire
How am I supposed to charge my phone when its in the third party cradle in my car being used for GPS if it has to lie flat on a charging pad? How am I supposed to charge it from a power bank when Im out and about?
I've never had a USB port fail - its always the plug that fails by design. I dunno what you're doing with your phones...
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 11:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Charge by wire
My kids have wrecked a couple of usb connectors over the years, I have once as well. Basic human clumsiness. The engineering design of both the old and new connectors is seriously flawed. They're way too fragile. Should have been implemented as a modular unit that could be easily swapped out by users, but that would have added pennies to the price of each unit!
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 15:16 GMT ChrisC
Re: Charge by wire
"I've never had a USB port fail - its always the plug that fails by design. I dunno what you're doing with your phones..."
Depends how old the phone is - IIRC in the days of mini-USB it was the socket that tended to fail, which was one of the reasons why micro-USB was redesigned to make the plug the weak point.
Also, micro-USB sockets, like any other uncovered recess on a device which spends significant amounts of time stuffed into a pocket, are far from immune to ending up getting themselves well and truly clogged solid with compacted crud. Again, this might not be a problem if you're in the habit of getting a new phone every year or two, but if you do find yourself hanging onto a phone for longer than this then there's a good chance the build-up of crud will start to reach critical levels, preventing the plug from mating cleanly with the socket.
Annoyingly, unlike lightning sockets where I first encountered this problem, micro-USB sockets are bloody difficult to clean out properly due to the contacts being on that central finger rather than arranged around the edges of the socket - you need a rather thin crud-hoiking-out tool to squeeze past this without causing it to bend alarmingly off to the side, but said tool still needs to be sturdy enough to then be able to make a dent in the layer of crud.
And of course, even if the socket and plug combo is designed so that the socket never clogs up, and the plug always wears out first, the socket is still soldered onto the PCB inside the phone, and will almost always only be held in place by those solder joints - you might get some assistance from the way the phone case wraps around the socket body, but every time you ram a plug into the socket, or yank a plug back out of the socket, you're stressing those joints, and sooner or later they're going to give way. If you're lucky they'll do so in a way which means you can still use the socket so long as the cable is held at just the right angle to push the broken joint back together, but if the break is bad enough then it's a case open repair job...
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Monday 2nd July 2018 16:45 GMT regregular
Re: Charge by wire
Even wireless charging requires a wire for the section between the power source and the wireless "base station" thingamajig you rest the phone on.
They could extrapolate their proprietary bullshit dollars from those things just as well. Deliver the wireless cake, and eat your bucks, as it were.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 14:14 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: Charge by wire
Most of the mobile accessories I buy come without a charger but with a micro-USB connection. With the standardisation I have no need to spend a lot of money on a badged charger, as I have more than enough chargers already including a compact 2-port one than can charge my S5 in an hour.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 15:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
How does an under screen fingerprint reader
Eliminate the need for a notch? You have a notch because you have stuff like cameras, speakers, microphones, etc. on the front of the phone. Apple added more to get the 3D face scan, but if they didn't have it and had put a fingerprint reader on the back they'd still have a notch.
I think one reason only 22% of phones have a notch that the article author overlooks is because the majority of phones released this year haven't tried to be 'all screen' or close to it yet, due to cost. Many phones still have both a 'forehead' and a 'chin' - it would be stupid to have a notch for the forehead and still have a chin.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 21:14 GMT heyrick
Re: How does an under screen fingerprint reader
"You have a notch because you have stuff like cameras, speakers, microphones, etc. on the front of the phone"
The Samsung S7 (my current) has this pretty much correct. At the top is the ear speaker, a camera, status LED, and some sensors. At the bottom is a physical button (doubles as fingerprint reader) and two virtual buttons. The screen doesn't go all the way to the top or bottom - and quite honestly I wouldn't want it to - or I'll have to contend with things in weird places. Where do later Samsungs put their fingerprint sensor? Oh yeah, on the back, right next to the camera. You know, that little thing you'd really rather not get great bloody fingerprints all over.
I took a quick look at https://www.cnet.com/pictures/phones-with-notches/9/ (random Google search) and can honestly say that the "notch" the most unbelievable goddamn ugly maladie to blight upon a phone. Who thought of such a thing? Seriously, a phone bearing such would have to literally shit digital rainbows in order to stop me putting it right back on the showroom shelf...
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 16:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: How does an under screen fingerprint reader
> Samsungs put their fingerprint sensor? Oh yeah, on the back, right next to the camera.
I'd rather it be out of the way for when I continue to not use it.
I always think it is funny that so many people who complain about Google Home or Alexa use fingerprint readers, FaceID, or iris scanners.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 19:51 GMT macjules
Re: Notch isn't so bad
I have an iPhone X (lovely phone squire, lovely. Look at the plumage). Why does it need a notch? Why couldn't the camera be on one side and the speaker integrated into the top of the phone?
Oh, and the screen cracked. Not a great problem as I have AppleCare, but if I didn't it is a whopping £286 each time to have it replaced. And there was me believing the hype that sapphire glass was stronger than normal glass.
I feel so stupid sometimes for trusting a company that sells you a phone made out of glass and then convinces you that it will never break.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 20:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Notch isn't so bad
Oh, and the screen cracked. Not a great problem as I have AppleCare, but if I didn't it is a whopping £286 each time to have it replaced.
I'm impressed. I run a delightful Xiaomi of broadly similar scale and user performance, whilst admittedly lagging on all matter of detail of synthetic benchmarks, and it was within a spit of being able to buy two complete phones for the price of one iPhone X screen.
I contend that you, Sir, are made of money.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 20:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Notch isn't so bad
"And there was me believing the hype that sapphire glass was stronger than normal glass."
For future reference:
1. Sapphire (actually single crystal alumina) is not a glass. Glasses do not have a long range crystalline structure, and in fact their composition can vary with depth (which is how Gorilla Glass works).
2. The front of the iPhone X is not crystalline alumina.
3. Alumina is good for watches because a watch face is small and held by a metal ring, which gives maximum rigidity and prevents cracking. It would be very bad for phones because it can only bend a very small amount before cracking, which would necessitate a very rigid and heavy frame (and quite thick and heavy alumina.)
4. The clever thing about modern phone glasses is that they are actually rather flexible and yet hard and fairly crack resistant. They are much better, in fact, for the job than alumina.
I don't believe Apple invested in alumina for anything other than watch and camera windows. Though I guess the repair cost for replacing a cracked alumina screen after someone dropped their 350g phone might have got the service department excited.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 15:02 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Notch isn't so bad
The screen thing really pisses me off! Sure they're going to break. It's inevitable. And you need big screens, as that's what the market is after.
But modern phone design is absolutely pisspoor.
Firstly too many phones are made out of horribly slippery materials. Remember the brilliant HTC Desire with the rubberised back? And the equally lovely and tactile Wildfire (though a less impressive phone). Or at least make the damned things matte not gloss!
Secondly many are designed to look all pretty, but really need to be cased. So why don't they ship with a fucking case? Rather than having to buy horrible bulky third-party ones... Or do what Nokia (then MS) did with the cheaper Lumia range. The phone itself has no back, but the whole thing fits into a rubberised plastic back which protects the sides of the screen and can deform in order to reduce the force of an impact. Sure it ain't so pretty, but it's much more practical.
Thirdly, why must the screen be so naked? Why can't we have bezels that protect the screen? Or there was a great case a few years ago that was basically 4 bouncy balls at the corners, so the phone couldn't land with the screen touching the ground - unless it fell on the very edge of something. Also the original iPad had a little rubber insert between the screen and the casing, which didn't look so pretty but meant that shocks to the case would have less impact on the screens. Which saved the screen from cracking in lots of cases.
The whole industry has gone form over function crazy, and it's really bloody annoying.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 19:10 GMT onefang
Re: Notch isn't so bad
"Secondly many are designed to look all pretty, but really need to be cased."
My Motorola Moto Z came with a "bumper", plastic thingy that covers the edges. It also came with one of the "style Moto Mods". If you are not familiar with the Moto Z series, the have a modular hardware system they call Moto Mod. One type of mod is called "style", basically just a plastic back that looks fancy, comes in many styles. The one I got in the box is fake wood grain. Together the bumper and the style mod make a reasonably protective case. I've dropped it several times, and it's been dropped by others. Typically one corner of the bumper takes most of the impact, it tends to fall off, as does the style mod. Not a scratch on any of those three items.
Other mods are available, some third party ones, YMMV with those other mods.
I also added a third party screen protector, and camera protector on the rear camera. They have worked well to.
"Thirdly, why must the screen be so naked? Why can't we have bezels that protect the screen?"
Yep, that bumper extends a millimeter or two past the front of the phone, providing effective "bezels that protect the screen". Which brings me back to ...
"Firstly too many phones are made out of horribly slippery materials."
The naked Moto Z is indeed slippery, the bumper and style mod not so much. You can feel the fake wood texture. Nicely matt.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 07:41 GMT Ken 16
Re: Notch isn't so bad
I bought a Doogee Y100 Pro in advance of a holiday based on it's ad showing someone cracking walnuts with the screen. Day 1 the wind blew it out of my pocket as I walked along a cliff and the screen cracked on the rocks (on the second bounce, I'll give it that). It still worked and at under €100 wasn't worth repairing.
That was my first cracked screen after about 5 years of smartphone ownership, until then I thought only iPhone screens cracked (because I'd only seen ads for iPhone screen replacement and people on public transport using iPhones with cracked screens) and it was 3 years til my next, when I dropped and cracked 2 in the space of a month.
I've gone Xiaomi too now, they work well and it's a big enough brand that I can get any accessory I want.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 12:11 GMT David Nash
Re: Notch isn't so bad
"I'd only seen ads for iPhone screen replacement and people on public transport using iPhones with cracked screens"
That's my experience too. My hypothesis is that a large part of the iPhone market overlaps with the set of people who treat their phone with less respect than a miniature high performance computer made of fragile materials deserves. ie. the young, they've been brought up with them being a normal part of life, not a new high-tech gadget, and treat them accordingly, like a toaster. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, then indifference.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 16:13 GMT mark l 2
A total lack of wired charging would be mean I would never purchase that model of phone. I suspect even fanbois for a manufacturer of phones that went down that route would be hard pressed to talk up the benefits to the customer for not having the ability to charge their phone using a cable.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 20:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Don't get too complacent. My work phone is a Samsung J3 (piece of total cheapskate shit, by the way), and it has USB C connector. Great, you can plug the fucker in any way round! On the other hand, 98% of all USB cables you'll find will be micro B.
So my point is simply that you (and I) can be hold outs, but ultimately we'll get what we're given.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 16:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "we'll get what we're given"
If you play the sales and deals, you can get the Samsung wireless chargers for like $20-$25.
While I can get cheapo-China cables on Amazon or whatever for $3, I'm also rolling the dice that they're going to short out and brick my phone. So I'm either going to pay closer to $15 for a premium charger that I have faith in, or $25 for a wireless charger (that comes with a Samsung cable to begin with).
You can always unplug the wireless part and plug the phone directly into it.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 21:20 GMT heyrick
"A total lack of wired charging would be mean I would never purchase that model of phone."
Ditto. But not just for charging. If there's no wire with which to charge with, it implies no wire for data transfer. What are you supposed to use? WiFi? Bluetooth? Some proprietary rubbish on top of WiFi? All will be slower than a direct cable...
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 19:25 GMT onefang
"What files are you putting on or off of your phone regularly?"
For me, it's mostly VR porn, which live in the micro SD card. When I give VR demonstrations to seniors, using that phone and a Google Daydream, I keep that card out of the phone. Don't want any of them stumbling across my porn collection, the venue managers might get upset. Some of the seniors might get upset, though some are a raunchy lot.
I do some volunteer work at this seniors place, as their IT guy. Teaching seniors how to use their phones and laptops, helping them with what ever thing they need help with. The whole stumbling across porn thing worked the other way one day. One of the seniors brought his laptop in, his web browser had stopped working. So I fire up the browser, note what error happens, a quick easy fix for an experienced computer guy like me. Then I fired up his browser once more, to show him it's now working. Naturally the browser said it detected it had crashed, should it open up the tabs it was showing before the crash? Being in helpful mode, I clicked on yes, the guy might have some important tabs open he would like to return to. The web site the browser opens up is full of porn, and worse, not my type of porn at all. I say "Oops", close it quickly before anyone pops their head in my office, and we have a bit of a laugh.
Paris, coz she's been known to pop up unexpectedly in porn, my type of porn.
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Monday 2nd July 2018 16:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
More non-Western models here, please
Large screen, massive battery, 3.5mm audio jack, sub $400. They probably have dual SIMs and micro SD cards, as well. For heaven's sake, can we have more of these sensible phones, but with a current OS, and less of the razor thin, notched, low battery-lifed, porn-star smooth port-less $1000+ fashion items that for some reason seem to be prized here?
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Monday 2nd July 2018 20:49 GMT Camilla Smythe
Whut?
Being a non smart phone user I thought that this might be a warning of some virusy thing but... It turned out to be click bait.
However if I were to be a smart phone user I would be telling those responsible to take their notch and fuck right off with the repulsive blemish.
I would also tell those trying to find excuses for the wart to go fuck off as well.
I was forced to Google this...
https://gizmodo.com/after-just-6-months-the-phone-notch-is-already-deeply-1823469447
When Essential debuted the first-ever notched display on the PH-1, it was a bold, divisive statement about smartphone design.
No!!11!! Just Fuck Off.
With the recent trend of smartphones opting for full-view or extra-wide or whatever you want to call it displays and cutting down on bezels, the notch was really an inevitable evolution.
No!!11!! Stop insulting Darwin or at least let Darwin take its course.
"Ooooo. I see you have a notch phone."
"Yes. Bow down before its Superior Notchiness."
"Still got your Google Glass stored in your Sock Draw?"
"Fuck Off!"
"BwaHahHahHahLOL."
"Fuck Off!"
And that’s really the issue at heart, because not long after Essential and Apple made notches neat, everyone else hopped on the bandwagon and ruined it. After all, there are few things worse than running into someone and realizing you are wearing the same clothes. What a bummer.
Wait... This is Gizmodo? Maybe I missed the <sarc> tags. Are they at WeboRrhea3?
... Glad I missed that bandwagon.
"Oooooooo. Yooooou've got a 'Notch Phone'."
"Fuck Off."
"Is it still under contract?"
"Look. Just Fuck OFF!"
"Mark of the Beast LOL... Noooo Don't hit me have some Beers as a consolation."
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 08:22 GMT Mystic Megabyte
We need a "Why bother?" icon
My 1st. gen. Moto G is still going strong on its original (replaceable) battery. It was £99 and I never bothered to insure it, saving me around £240 so far. If the screen were to crack I would just bin it. It's stuck on Android 5.x so I'm planning to put Lineage OS on it when I get the time. That will bring it up to Android 7.1.2.
I agree with the comments above, I want a wire with a standard connector.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 10:56 GMT John Sanders
>> Many models will never wash up in mature markets like the UK, but it's what the production lines are churning out. The survey includes many models not marketed here, but popular for providing buyers in emerging markets with large displays and hefty batteries. That skews the survey towards larger phones.
Oh shock, oh horror, some people are more concerned by function than form.
And even more shocking, some people buy phones to actually use them, and not as a piece of jewellery.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 11:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Feature or "Feature".
I don't know why reviews and articles talk of the notch as a feature - surely it's a "feature", as in a nasty addition to a product that attempts to disguise that someone cocked up and that the underlying problem was never fixed. I suspect many readers spend much of their professional lives trying to avoid adding "features" in the first place.
But then I could be a bit odd. Everyone raves over the curved screen edges on phones such as the Samsung S8 and personally I hate it. It distorts the display which drives me nuts and any apps that go right to the edge suffer from the reduced accuracy and sensitivity of the touch panel. I liked my old S4 and every phone I had previously that did perfectly well with a flat screen and a bezel.
If we allow this nonsense to continue, before we know it Google will do something really daft with Android like move the clock over to the left and... what... ?
Oh.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 12:01 GMT Andytug
I have a Sony Xperia
Compact version (so fits in pocket), bezels top and bottom for the two speakers and the camera, not a problem. Only thing I think would be handy on a phone would be an e-ink screen on the back to display notifications constantly without running the battery down, didn't someone try that and it never sold though....?
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 12:03 GMT tentimes
The biggest problem with Android is this...
Operators not updating phones. LG are really bad for this. Samsung seem to be pretty good - I am still getting regular security updates for my S7.
IMHO we should start ranking the manufacturers on timely security updates and naming and shaming the ones that don't update their tat.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 19:44 GMT onefang
Re: The biggest problem with Android is this...
"IMHO we should start ranking the manufacturers on timely security updates"
For what it is worth, my Moto Z, flagship from two or three years ago, started life with Android 6.0.1 when I got it out of the box, got 7.0 OTA soon after, monthly OTA updates until end of last year, there was several months delay, then it got 8.0.0 OTA. My last OTA update was a week or two ago, security patches and kernel from May. I fully expect it to keep getting OTA updates every month or two, and perhaps Android 9 several months after that's released.
Likely not the best, but pretty good. Tends to be only a month or two behind for security updates.
I can't give details for my old Galaxy S3, I pretty much rooted it and flashed it shortly after buying it. Moto Z is almost unadulterated Android, Galaxy S3 isn't, which is why I flashed it after giving the Samsung software a brief trial. If Motorola fall behind with their updates, I'll likely put LineageOS on it. Though I understand LineageOS doesn't support Google Daydream, and might not support Moto Mods. Which could be a deal breaker.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 12:50 GMT J27
I don't know about all this notch hate, on Android if it's no bigger than the notification bar and not massively wide you're not really missing out on anything. Color that bar black and you just have floating notifications. Seems acceptable to me. That or a popup front camera, neither bugs me. I don't that many selfies.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 15:37 GMT JohnFen
"you're not really missing out on anything"
You may not be, but I sure would. The notch tends to take up a lot of the space that would be used for the notification bar, so I'd have to eliminate some items from the notification bar.
It really irritates me to have to give up useful functionality for aesthetics. Particularly when the aesthetics are of the terrible variety.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 14:12 GMT David 164
I know this was a tongue in cheek article but the notch isn't there for the fingerprint scanner, which work really well being place on the back. It there to accommodate front facing camera and other sensors that the selfie generation demand.
Personally I would love nothing more for a manufacture to release a phone with zero front facing cameras, with 100% front edge to edge screen with the screen being use as a speaker,. But I suspect such a design wouldn't go over well with the selfie generation, even with a second screen on the back for self photos.
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Tuesday 3rd July 2018 22:27 GMT JohnFen
"Personally I would love nothing more for a manufacture to release a phone with zero front facing cameras"
I'm with you there. The camera, whether front or rear facing, is something that I use so rarely that I wouldn't miss it if it were absent. I use fingerprint scanners even less. But I absolutely don't want a 100% edge-to-edge screen -- after trying it out, it's clear that, for me, it's a misfeature that causes problems all by itself.
I want some amount of space around the edges where I can hold the thing without covering any display area or touching a touch-sensitive surface.
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Wednesday 4th July 2018 15:25 GMT Spanners
Re: ???
The "notch" is a black blob in the top centre of the screens of some new phone types.
Discussion has expanded to other "clever ideas" that are being incorporated into new phones without our being asked.
My conclusion is that the notch is ugly and unneccesary. It is part of efforts to remove features from phones that trendy designers do not like. The removals of some of the features may even be profit driven. I have nothing against profit itself. I just don't think too much of it if it leaves me with an ugly, less useful and more expensive device.
I think the conversation has expanded from a discussion of one feature, to one about a lot more. That's what forums (fora) are for.
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