as the performance improvements and each
new generation of smartphones have
dwindled engineering and marketing
departments alike have looked for new
ways to quantify just how great their
latest gadgets really are now before we
had the races for more megapixels
thinner chassis and ever greater pixel
density displays with all of these
eventually reaching the point where they
actually caused as many problems as they
solved and lately it's been all about
screen to body ratio and boy has this
one ever resulted in some ugly ducklings
thankfully it's almost over
and I'ma tell you why with glass where
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[Music]
so the current goal for pretty much
every modern smartphone manufacturer
seems to be to build a phone with bezels
so thin that they're effectively not
even there I'm sure some of you are
already drooling at the thought of an
all screen phone but others might say
well it's kind of stupid aren't bezels
small enough as it is
and those people have a point for some
of the folks out there bezels have
already gotten so small but they can
make it more difficult to use the phone
like if you're reaching across with your
thumb while typing one-handed the thing
is that you need a little bit of bezel
in order to hold on to your device and
there's got to be a little bit of non
sensitive part there because skin is not
hard it's soft and it kind of pushes
onto it now this is something that's
less likely to come up in portrait mode
but I've actually noticed that it can be
uncomfortable to hold a phone with tiny
or no bezels while watching videos or
playing games your mileage may vary
though but in spite of these practical
concerns there is certainly some sex
appeal if nothing else to an all screen
device so let's take a look in today's
video at the various approaches that
manufacturers are taking to get as close
as possible now the first thing that
probably came to your mind is
everybody's favorite the knotch it seems
like everyone loves to crucify Apple for
inventing this and you wouldn't be
unfair to say that they definitely
helped to popularize the design but
Apple wasn't the first company to
utilize not that particular crown of
thorns lies upon the head of LG their
v10 launched back in 2015 had a massive
notch in the corner for the front
cameras now they kind of put some
spackle on this with a second display
that was used exclusively for shortcuts
stats or notifications so people really
didn't see it as taking away from the
main display hence the lack of outrage
the first screen to actually make use of
an in screen knotch was the sharp s2 as
a way to showcase their freeform display
technology freeform works by moving the
displays driving electronics away from
the edges and into the screen itself
allowing a display to be made into
virtually any shape a couple days later
there was the slightly more popular
essential phone and then finally of
course the iPhone 10 so why does the
knotch need to be there well if you
extend the display all the way to the
bottom of the phone removing the chin
bar all you need to relocate is the home
button which can be easily moved around
to the back or the side or done through
software without any real compromise to
usability however when you go to extend
the display upward to remove the
forehead you encounter a bit of a
dilemma the front facing camera and
sensors can't really be moved without
sacrificing some pretty serious
functionality hence the knotch the next
attempts to make an all screen display
were kind of a throwback to the sliding
phones of the early 2000s now there is
some variety in the approaches around
this concept but they mostly fall into
two types either some portion of the
back of the phone slides up exposing the
selfie camera and/or the sensors like on
the Xiaomi me mix 3 or the camera pops
out on a little nubbin like on the vivo
necks now at first glance this kind of
seems like a no-brainer the perfect
solution that just took a little bit of
backwards thinking but sadly there are a
number of downsides to either design
with the biggest one being structural
integrity going from that no moving
pieces to well any moving pieces will
have some impact on the phone's
durability especially if your slider is
motorized like on the Oppo find X and
you're gonna be kind of screwed if the
internal motors just stopped working
especially on this one because they also
got rid of the fingerprint sensor like
Apple
and that's before we can even get to the
other downsides like how would you make
a case for this device and if you could
well how is that slider going to affect
its susceptibility to water damage or
dust ingress now technically there is
still time to see how these devices hold
up but in my book honestly they're just
kind of a dead meme at this point I mean
they're cool but which brings us next to
a solution that be obvious to anyone who
thinks that people posing for selfies
are a bunch of narcissistic douche bugs
douche box I like that douche box
what if we just removed the selfie cam
then who cares the problem with that is
that well then you wouldn't be able to
take selfies anymore but fear not VEVO
solution to this is what actually
inspired us to make this video the V
phone X dual display is a truly
fascinating device as the name implies
it actually has two displays one right
here on the front and another one on the
back so the idea is that when you want
to take a selfie you can just flip
around the phone and use the rear
display to see what the crap it is that
you're doing now it is a little bit less
convenient but I gotta say using your
full fat rear camera to take your
selfies is going to seriously help you
step up your Instagram game and what's
cool is that the second screen also
provides some extra functionality like
showing you the framing of the shot if
you ask someone else to take a photo for
you so you can avoid that whole like hey
can you take a picture for me and then
they take the picture and you like look
at it and you kind of wait till they
leave and then you ask someone else
because they're just completely
incompetent it also allows you to
quickly flip to the other side of the
phone to attend to random social media
stuff while gaming and some other things
as well it's kind of cool but the
current implementation is
still a little bit clunky not to mention
that on this particular phone there's
this massive weird camera bump that
doubles as a notification LED rings I
don't know I think a regular LED on the
back probably would have sufficed so
hopefully the next version goes with
that instead with all that said out of
everything that's available right now
the dual screen approach to making an
all screen device is my personal
favorite even if there's still some work
to do on the software side of things
I've already seen a rear screen used in
other novel ways like on the Nubia X
which handled switching screens really
quickly while I was playing with it at
CES and use that rear screen to provide
extra rear buttons for gaming the issue
though is that every one of these
solutions seems to make at least one
compromise whether that's a less
intuitive experience making the phone a
nice or compromising durability or
adding thickness and or reducing battery
life because the bloody thing has two
screens so back to that ultimate goal of
a whole screen phone the only perfect
answer seems to be an under screen
camera but at this time it looks like
we're gonna have to wait awhile for that
now we did visit lg displays Factory in
Korea quite recently and they were
extremely proud of their approximately
50% transparency
OLED displays but given that issues
exist with selfie camera image quality
already cutting the light transmission
in half probably isn't gonna be a good
time but progress is happening so under
screen fingerprint scanners like the one
in the oneplus 60 and in the vivo next
dual screen here actually are very
similar technologically to camera
sensors just with quality standards that
aren't as high as you'd expect from
you're trying to snap a selfie in the
club or whatever so I'm still pretty
hopeful but let us know in the comments
down below first would you have
preferred that we had gone with our
original plan of just doing a normal
review of this phone or did you enjoy us
using it as a prop to take a broader
look at current all screen display
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tips we're gonna have that linked below
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