Chinese smartphone maker Huawei today introduced the Nova 4, featuring what has become known as a "hole-punch" display.
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The "hole-punch" design refers to the tiny hole for the 25-megapixel front camera, rather than the controversial notch, allowing for a nearly edge to edge display. Of course, this means the Nova 4 lacks the necessary sensors for 3D facial recognition and instead relies on a fingerprint scanner for authentication.
The display still has a thicker bottom bezel, known as a "chin," so this still isn't a completely full-screen design.
As noted by The Verge, the Nova 4 follows in the footsteps of Huawei's View 20 and Samsung's new Galaxy A8s as the latest smartphone with a "hole-punch" display. The Nova 4 also has a triple-lens rear camera setup, including a main 48-megapixel lens, a trend that some 2019 iPhones are expected to follow.
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There's a slim chance that Apple ever adopts the "hole-punch" design for iPhones due to the TrueDepth system for Face ID, unless it invents new ways to integrate all of the various sensors under the display. The more likely possibility is that the notch is here to stay for now, but gets slimmed down over time.
The Nova 4 is currently limited to China, priced around the equivalent of $490. Huawei will likely expand availability to select other regions soon, although its devices aren't available through any major carriers in the United States.
Top Rated Comments
And then there's the fact that it still has a chin.
But, look, if you're an iPhone owner hoping for a similar effect, I've got a DIY solution:
Definite improvement over the notch design.
I will assume this is sarcasm.As a notch-lover, it must drive you crazy that you could have achieved the same effect with a piece of black tape on earlier iPhones - years ago
Didn't realise that sticking on a piece of black tape would enable 3D face recognition or suddenly make the rest of the display edge-to-edge.Maybe I'm doing it wrong. [USER=256215]@AngerDanger[/USER], could you help me out with a GIF outlining how to follow Bacillus' steps? I'm really struggling.
Definite improvement over the notch design.
But is it? That screen corner is totally useless for displaying anything, and unlike a notch it isn't symmetrical. Apple's notch is probably a bit big, but I prefer it to this. The OnePlus 6T notch looks far better than this hole punch fad, in my opinion.Soon phone makers will start touting 'revolutionary smart sensor bars' at the top of phones, and we'll just be back where we started...