It seems like yesterday but five years have passed since the iPhone X, the iPhone that took away the home button and its Touch ID, betting everything on secure facial recognition with sensors that did not fit anywhere else except in a huge eyebrow on the top. In the next five years Apple has been reducing the notch and now it has finally killed it. About.
The reign of the notch is over, but only on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max: the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus stay as they are (almost literally). And how has Apple managed to escape the notch? With the same solution that has been exploring Android since 2018: the camera perforated in the screen. But big time.
five years of eyebrows
The iPhone X of 2017 accelerated the trend of pushing the screen to the limits of the front, definitively eliminating the keyboard (or button, in the case of the iPhone), although there was a problem: the front camera. Technically Apple could have implemented Touch ID on the side or the back, but by definition the front camera must go to the front.
The Cupertino company solved both problems with a slice or, rather, with the blow of an eyebrow. The notch was born a “tab” that burst across the top of the screen to incorporate the front camera, speaker and the sensors necessary for the operation of Face ID, the secure biometrics based on the face instead of fingerprints.
The notch caused sensations of all kinds among the public, although Apple wanted to make it clear that it was here to stay, inviting users and developers to accept it: there was no going back. And he wasn’t lying. The same notch remained practically unchanged during the following years and it would take a ruler to appreciate the millimeter differences between them.
Four years later, Apple finally managed to reduce the notch on the iPhone 13, being no longer very different from what we found, for example, in the Huawei Mate 30 of 2019. This is something else: the space on both sides of said notch was much more loose and the feeling was more of having an upper part with a little thing in the middle than having a big thing with bits of screen on its sides. Is not the same.
Android was inspired but evolved in its own way
We go back to the moment of the launch of the iPhone X and it is undeniable that the majority of directors of Android mobile manufacturers took good note. Over the next year the notch invaded Android and for all the wrong reasons. The eyebrow attracted attention, that is undeniable, and there were those who wanted to get on the hump of fashion to receive a bit of it, although these notches did not make much sense as they did not have Face ID.
An Android mobile with a large notch for pure aesthetics
The large iPhone-style notch was present in a handful of mobiles, but it did not materialize and instead ended up imposing the notch in the form of a drop as the universal solution. Later something even more discreet would arrive: the front camera perforated in the screen.
Samsung announced its first mobile with the front camera perforated in the screen with 2018 in its last days, the Galaxy A8s with Infinity-O screen, and the trend did not take long to catch on, especially among premium mobiles, to extend in the following years to basically all ranges except the cheapest. All this, with a crazy period of experimentation where motorized or pop-up cameras such as the Huawei P Smart Z or sliding mechanisms, such as those of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, were not lacking.
Since then Android makers have been flirting with the idea of include the front camera under the screen, although it remains more of an experiment than a solution for the masses, at least for now. At present, the perforation in the screen is still the preferred solution for the masses, with the teardrop notch as an alternative for the cheaper ranges. All this evolution has happened in Android while Apple reduced its notch in millimeters.
From the eyebrow we went to the island
We return to Apple in 2022 and the company has finally decided to end the notch, but only on its most powerful and expensive phones. From the anchored eyebrow to the upper part we pass to an island that does not stop still. It is roughly the notch the iPhone 13, but now floating on the screen. The rest is taken care of by the software.
After five years of notch, Apple has perfected the technique of hiding that thing in the middle of the screen with all kinds of tricks, and it must be recognized that in this latest iteration they have put all the meat on the grill. Instead of drilling a small hole so we can forget about it, drilling takes center stage by animating and expanding to display additional information. Is not a bugis a feature.
This same information could be displayed without problems on the sides of said perforation, as usual, but Apple’s solution allows us to momentarily forget that there is a pill of sensors covering our upper part from the screen. At least, while we use the mobile vertically.
Five years later, Apple has reached the same conclusion as Android As for what is the best solution to incorporate the front camera, although the stubbornness to keep Face ID instead of going back to a Touch ID that could perfectly be included under the screen makes the implementation quite different (that’s a word, big) to that of Android. And all this, without having to try anything new, but looking from the sidelines what others do.
