Every now and then the smartphone market goes through a trend where a number of companies adopt the same feature as their product continues to evolve. In the last few years this has happened with improved designs and build materials of flagship devices, top of the line cameras, and the removal of the 3.5mm headphone port. This year it looks as if the new trend is the introduction of the display notch as more and more companies minimize the top and bottom bezels as much as possible. A new sketch from a Lenovo executive shows what is said to be the upcoming Lenovo Z5 and it could be the first truly “all screen” smartphone without any notches to house important hardware.
As we’ve watched companies work to shrink the top and bottom bezels, it has forced them to get creative with where they decide to move those sensors, speaker, and camera. For example, Xiaomi doesn’t even have a traditional earpiece speaker and instead uses a piezoelectric speaker for the Mi Mix series. Then we have OnePlus who will have the regular notch to fit the hardware but will give the user the option to imitate top bezel by displaying a black bar so it will look like a device with a slim top bezel.
It’s incredibly difficult to include the necessary hardware that we’re used to on the front of our smartphones when we are trying to stretch the display all the way to the edges of the device. Interestingly enough, Lenovo may be the first company to release an all screen smartphone as their Vice President, Chang Cheng, published a sketch of what is said to be the upcoming Lenovo Z5 on Weibo. The image clearly shows an all screen smartphone but they leave us guessing as to where the hardware will go.
This may just end up being so early in the design process for the Lenovo Z5 that the final product will not end up looking exactly like this sketch. But if that’s the case, it’s a strange decision for an executive to show off to their customers if it just ended up letting them down in the long run.