Check out the smartphone display with the smallest bezels yet
The bezels wars may not be in the news as much, but they continue with a record-breaking panel expected on a 2026 phone.
Record-breaking phone panel has the smallest bezel to date. | Image by Ice Universe
Leaker Ice Universe shared an interesting photo on X that shows a display panel made by Chinese firm Tianma. You might already see what makes this panel special by looking at it. According to Ice Universe, the bezels on this display measure just 0.35 mm, much smaller than the bezels on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models.
This AMOLED panel sports record-breaking bezels of .35 mm
The 6.32-inch AMOLED display has, as noted, record-breaking .35mm bezels at the panel level and expands to .60mm at the module level. The screen-to-body ratio is as high as 98.5% and the display offers a 240Hz refresh rate, which means that the screen refreshes itself 240 times per second. That is twice the rate of the 120Hz refresh rate still found on many phones such as the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
So which phone manufacturer will be the first to employ the record-setting panel? Oppo seems to be the favorite to snag the panel first thanks to a strategic partnership and a joint laboratory that Oppo and Tianma launched last September. Additionally, the Oppo Find X9 was the first phone to use Tianma's Tiangong screen.
Photo shows Tianma's record breaking AMOLED panel with bezels as small as.35 mm | Image by Ice Universe
The bezel wars took place in 2017
No one cared about bezels in the early years of the touchscreen smartphone era. For example, the side bezels on the original iPhone were approximately 4.0 mm to 4.5 mm, while the top and bottom bezels measured approximately 18mm to 20mm. Also, consider that the screen-to-body ratio on the first iPhone was 52.35%.
What is more important than bezel size when you buy a new phone?
The "bezel wars" took place in 2017 and some of the phones that we highlighted at the time were the Essential Phone, which had the highest screen-to-body ratio at 85%. That was followed by the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S8, and the Galaxy S8+ with a screen-to-body ratio of 83-84%.
2017 was also the year that Apple redesigned the iPhone and released the iPhone X with Face ID replacing Touch ID. The screen-to-body ratio on the Apple iPhone X was 82%, well above the 65.4% for the iPhone 8 and 67.4% for the iPhone 8 Plus, both of which were also released in 2017.
The Essential Phone never had a successor. The Essential Products company, run by Andy Rubin, shut down before a successor could be released. Rubin was known as the father of Android for co-founding Android, Inc. before Google bought it in 2003.
The iPhone XX (iPhone 20) could look like a slab of glass without any bezels
The bezel sizes for the iPhone 8 were approximately 4.1 mm for the sides and 19.0 mm for the top. For the iPhone 8 Plus the bezels measured approximately 5.03 mm and 19.44 mm for the sides and top, respectively. For the iPhone X, the bezel sizes were 4.13 mm for the sides and 8.93 mm for the top (including the notch).
The bezel war might be over, but bezel sizes continue to shrink. The iPhone 17 Pro has a bezel size of approximately 1.44 mm. For the 20th anniversary iPhone XX, Apple is reportedly planning to use a screen that curves down on all four corners of the phone to make the device look like a slab of glass with no cutouts and no bezels.
For Apple to make this happen, it will need to move Face ID's components and the phone's front-facing camera under the screen. Should Apple succeed, the bezel wars will have a winner. For now, whichever phone gets to use Tianma's new display will be known as the handset with the smallest bezels.
Here we are in 2026, and we wonder whether a smaller bezel on a phone's display panel would make you more likely to buy that phone instead of a model sporting larger bezels. You can write your answer in a comment box below.
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