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The sleeper cell of button-less phones may prove to be a dormant hit

By Daniel Petrov

Published: Jan 25, 2019, 9:16 AM

19comments

Android Polls

Are you digging the new port-less, button-less, hole-less phones concept?

Yes

52.87%

47.13%

Yesterday, we asked you whether you like the monolithic concept of phones with a bare minimum of openings - no audio or charging ports, no speaker or earpiece grills - and without any buttons on the side, and plenty of you said yes.

As you can see from our poll results above, the button-less handset's time may have arrived, as a good chunk of our 1286 respondents seem to be yearning for something, anything, different than the established design wisdom.

While those hole-less phones may not serve a much practical purpose just yet, and their creators are yet to slap a price or release date on them, or even finalize their specs, there is obvious potential in the idea which remains to see good execution.

If you thought that 2019 will go by under the auspices of hole-in-display designs (cough, Galaxy S10, cough) or foldable phone, you are sorely mistaken. Actually, first there was the Vivo soap teaser, then came the revelation that Meizu will beat it to the punch with a phone that has no ports or buttons around it, and today came the Apex 2019.

Call it what you will (Vivo calls it Super Unibody) but this design is spearheading 2019 as its first novelty (the punch-hole is so 2018) with the Meizu Zero and the Apex 2019. Both phones have no charging or audio ports, no large earpieces or speakers, and no physical buttons around them, achieving a design as monolithic as possible with today's technology.

The sleeper cell of button-less phones may prove to be a dormant hit

They manage it via the ingenious mashup of existing tech like wireless charging and audio streaming, sound-emitting displays, and touch- or pressure sensitivity for the ex-button duties.

Vivo even equipped the new Apex with an all-screen reader that can scan your fingerprint almost anywhere on the display. This Holy Grail of fingerprint recognition is a bit clumsy still, as exemplified in the hands-on videos with the phone, but it is a great thing to come in mobile biometry nonetheless.

Still, to some this port-less phones concept might seem a bit of an overkill and design waxing for the sake of it, but the Meizu Zero and Apex 2019 seem to be on an intriguing path nonetheless.

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.