The smartphone breakthrough I’ve waited almost a decade for is finally happening thanks to the iPhone

There are a few practices in the modern smartphone industry that don’t sit right with me. The absence of the headphone jack (thank you, Apple), for example. Or the lack of a charger in the box (thank you, Apple).

How battery capacities have stagnated so much for Samsung and Apple phones is another thing I can’t stop being mad over. But there’s one practice that has grinded my gears since its inception and subsequent popularization thanks, again, to Apple. The gravest smartphone sin.

The notch. Punch hole cutouts. The Dynamic Island.

Each and every form of a display cutout bothers me. What, pray tell, is the point of splurging so much for an amazing display with all of the latest tech that makes for a stunning result if there’s a massive blotch on one edge?

My severe dislike for display cutouts

Feel free to skip this portion if you don’t care about hearing me rant about something that has been commonplace across the industry for years, because rant I will. Some of you will probably recognize that this isn’t the first time, either.

A display is the one thing on a device that should have no distractions on it whatsoever. No scratches, no dead or stuck pixels, and most definitely not an intentional hole. It should simply not happen, period.

What’s worse is that as phones got taller and taller, new video formats started gaining popularity. Formats that fill up the entire screen, formats that leave you no choice but to accept the ridiculous cutout in your phone’s screen. Lest you keep changing your phone’s display settings each time you feel like watching a YouTube video with your supper.



I used to return monitors if they had a single dead pixel because my eyes would automatically gravitate towards that blemish. A display is something you view things on, why does it need imperfections? Narrow bezels? Come on.

It’s time to kill the notch

I’ve had to bear display cutouts for almost a decade. Even budget smartphones immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started shipping with waterdrop notches and punch hole cutouts after Apple popularized them.

If I didn’t opt for a very niche phone like the RedMagic 10 Pro, I was forced to just deal with these cutouts. That is about to change at long last.

Next year, Apple is working on releasing the iPhone 20 Pro to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the iPhone. It will feature “Liquid Glass Display” — tentative name — which will have ever so slightly curved edges to give off the feeling of a screen floating above the phone.

But, most importantly of all, Apple is trying its best to secure this panel with an under-display Face ID and front camera setup. You know the best part? Now that Apple is doing it, so is everyone else.



Oppo is copying Apple’s new display design, and it’s not alone. Another report (translated source) has come out that reveals that the five major phone manufacturers of China are all now working on similar displays of their own.

Xiaomi, Vivo, Honor, Huawei, and the aforementioned Oppo are all working on a similar floating display design. They are all also working on shifting the front camera beneath the display.

Some reports even claim that the few Chinese phones that use depth mapping for their own Face ID alternatives might see those components moved beneath the display as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am ecstatic. The horrid era of notches, punch holes, and other similar nonsense is finally coming to an end. Once again, smartphones will feature premium screens that are a joy to use, not an exercise in frustration for display purists and perfectionists like myself.

Apple finally has a chance to make up for the worst thing, in my eyes, that it has ever done. May we never return to display cutouts ever again.

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