A few days ago, Samsung's new generation of flagship mobile phone Galaxy S22 series was officially released, in addition to the S22 Ultra of the super cup, the middle cup S22 and the large cup S22+ were separated from the curved screen design and used back to the straight screen. As the guide of the curved screen mobile phone, such a design is really too bad for Samsung.
Not only that, galaxy S22, S22+ also bring the iPhone commonly used and rare on Android phones on the four sides of the same width design, coupled with extremely narrow borders, bringing a very impactful sense of order beauty. Do those who are suffering from curved screens see new hope?
In fact, Android phones that meet the four-sided equal width, narrow bezels, and straight screens are not absent, and Google's Pixel 5 released in 2020 is one of them. But as bad as its sales, this form does not have such a high presence in Android phones. So, since Android phones can achieve such a beautiful straight-screen design, why are few manufacturers doing it?
The four-sided iso-width design of Android phones has a long history. In September 2010, Samsung released the Galaxy Tab P1000, which has a 7.0-inch, 1024 x 600 resolution display with a self-developed "Hummingbird" processor and running the Android 2.2 operating system. Its front panel bezel is "wide" on all four sides – not only uniform in width, but surprisingly wide!
Admittedly, some friends may have objections: Isn't this a tablet? But it is undeniable that it is indeed a mobile phone. The Samsung Galaxy Tab P1000 can insert a SIM card, supports phone calls and text messages, and is one of the earliest "phablets".
Of course, comparing this "isospace" design with today's mobile phones is undoubtedly putting the cart before the horse. But this is 2010 after all, and the ultra-narrow bezel phone we are accustomed to to today may only live in the laboratory, or in a movie like "Iron Man".
LG transparent phone in Iron Man 2 (2010)
Aside from imagination, what prevents a phone with a four-sided equal width and a narrow bezels from coming to reality? There are two main constraints here, one is the size of the component, and the other is the packaging process. This troublesome thing of the front camera is not mentioned for the time being, with the improvement of technology, the components can be made smaller and smaller, and the biggest remaining trouble is the packaging process.
In the early days of smartphones, the common screen packaging process was COG (Chip On Glass). COG is a long-standing packaging method in the mobile phone industry, the IC chip, FPC cable is placed on the back panel glass of the screen, so a large area of screen space is occupied, inevitably causing a "big chin". However, in that era, the wide chin did not bring any discomfort, and it could also accommodate the physical buttons of iPhones and Android phones, and its practicality gave its own meaning.
The chin will not be removed for a while and a half, and the manufacturers will start the idea of a side border. As the leading boss of screen technology, Samsung was the first to remove the screen border. At the 2014 IFA conference, Samsung released the Galaxy Note Edge mobile phone, which uses a one-sided curved screen design.
Samsung Galaxy Note Edge not only eliminated one side of the border, its side surface also supports notification browsing, multi-application quick switching and other functions, is an important innovation in the history of smartphone form. Immediately after the Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung made both sides of the phone screen curved, so that the double-sided equilateral borderless borderless. The beauty of such a subversive design makes the world sigh.
In addition to the stunning, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is like opening Pandora's ink cartridge, creating an era of curved screens, making many users cry bitterly. The curved screen is really good-looking, but on the other hand, it is really unconscious: it is not good to paste the film, it is easy to touch by mistake, the hardware layout needs to be compromised, and so on. Having made so many sacrifices for aesthetics and eye care, is the curved screen really worth it?
Change-makers arrived in 2017. The iPhone X debuted at Apple's fall conference this year, bringing a highly controversial bangs screen, as well as a unique aesthetic of narrow bezels + four sides equal width. Strictly speaking, the side bezels of the iPhone X are not exactly the same width as the upper and lower bezels, but they look no different from the same width to the naked eye, and the sense of order is satisfied by the human eye.
Image from GSMArena
Starting with the iPhone X, the four-sided isoweek design has been used on the flagship iPhone to this day. Their bangs year after year are complained about, and the four-sided isospace straight screen they insist on is also praised, which shows that curved screens are not the only choice for beauty.
Since the release of the iPhone X, the ultra-narrow bezel screen technology of four sides is equal width has matured, which is both beautiful and easier to use than the curved screen, why is it so rare on Android phones?
The number one reason, of course, is cost. In order to achieve a narrow bezel design with four sides of equal width, the iPhone adopts the COP package process (Chip On PI), which is different from the traditional COG and the mainstream COF (Chip On Film), which uses the characteristics of the flexible OLED screen to bend the cables and ICs all under the screen to achieve a visual effect close to "no bezel". Because the combination of COP packaging technology + flexible OLED is high cost and low yield, it has not been widely adopted except for some flagship mobile phones.
Another reason is the idea. Since the beginning of 2019, smart phones have set off a wind of curved screens, and Samsung curved screens have almost become the standard of top flagship mobile phones, and even the deformed products such as waterfall screens have appeared. Mobile phones with four sides of equal width, narrow bezels and straight screens are not absent, but they rarely appear on top flagships or mainstream high-end models. Even if some manufacturers launch such models, their positioning must be below the top models.
For example, Google's flagship series last year, Pixel 6 uses a four-sided iso-wide direct screen design, and the more high-end Pixel 6 Pro still uses a curved screen. Cop process plus flexible OLED, coupled with the cost of other ultra-narrow bezels, mobile phone manufacturers are more willing to use this design on the flagship of the oversized cup with low sales and high profits, rather than spending more money on the volume model. But every time you make a super-large cup flagship, manufacturers are more willing to use the curved screen form, so the cycle.
Nowadays, the biggest significance of the curved screen is to improve the thickness and grip of various types of oversized cup flagships, so that it will not be like a half-pound brick in the hand. On the other hand, the curved screen has dried up the borders on both sides of the screen, which also makes the screen ratio value more beautiful, creating an extra publicity point for the mobile phone.
On the just-released Samsung Galaxy S22 series, we finally see another possibility for screen aesthetics. The ultra-narrow bezel and four-sided equal-width straight screen are not its decisive selling points, but they may be the future vane of Android smartphones.
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