Samsung has patented a borderless phone design with no notch which would be a design for the company that would seek to outdo competitors with a device that offers the most screen real estate. The patent was discovered in an application which was filed by Samsung today, January 18th, over at the World Intellectual Property Organization website, the same place where a different Samsung phone design patent was recently discovered that was seemingly in direct contrast to this one, as the phone design in that particular patent does have a nearly borderless design, yet does have a notch cutout for the front-facing camera.
In this new patent, Samsung appears to be envisioning a design for a future smartphone that will utilize what are thought to be under-display fingerprint and front-facing camera sensors, which would allow Samsung to actually use most of the front panel and eliminate bezels. Keeping this in mind, there is a part of the display as shown in some of the diagrams below that wouldn’t actually be interactive in terms of the user interface, such as the part with the fingerprint sensor. Based on the first few images in the gallery the user interface for the phone would only extend as far down as this area. Still, the design implies that bezels would essentially be gone and that’s an important factor in the race to create an all-screen smartphone.
Showing in the image above you get a closer look at what parts of the UI would look like at the top edge of the display. This would be the area where the status bar sits, and it appears that details like upcoming meetings and other notifications would be listed here. That doesn’t necessarily mean this part would allow users to touch to interact with it as it could simply be for listing notifications, but if this is running on Android then it should allow for such interaction. It also appears that users may have the option to modify the view of these details and choose to place them below the sensors to make them easier to read without obstruction from the sensors, camera, and earpiece. It’s important to keep in mind that right now, this is just a patent design for a phone that Samsung has filed and with it being filed today there’s a good chance it may be a while before something like this is actually released, but there’s also a chance Samsung could already be working on it and have things ready for a device sooner rather than later. The phone does visually resemble Samsung’s popular Galaxy Note series phones, so perhaps this will be the design for the next device in that series.
