The OnePlus 6 will have a display notch, with one of its official renders being shared by The Verge earlier today alongside that claim attributed to an interview with the company’s co-founder Carl Pei. The image seen above shows the top portion of the phone and the cutout that Mr. Pei revealed is 19.616 x 7.687mm in size. The notch houses the OnePlus 6’s front-facing camera, earpiece, and an ambient light sensor, with the firm claiming it’s the smallest it can be without any quality compromises being made. The OxygenOS running on the OnePlus 6 should still be based on Android 8.1 Oreo but will move the clock to the top left corner of the display, akin to what most smartphones will be doing following the move to Android P whose native clock is positioned in an identical manner.
The cutout of the OnePlus 6 will be disguised during video playback, with Mr. Pei attributing the decision to adopt it to an attempt to provide users with more screen real estate by moving the notification bar higher, thus reiterating the arguments previously made by the likes of Apple and ASUS. The Chinese phone maker had its team test the 1,000 most popular Android apps on the Google Play Store in order to determine which ones will require additional optimizations for the notch-equipped screen of its upcoming flagship, Mr. Pei revealed. The OnePlus 6 should also free additional screen space on the bottom by replacing traditional Android system buttons with gestures which are presently being beta-tested by the firm. The OnePlus official admitted the company may not have been as quick to adopt such gestures and notches had it not been for Apple’s iPhone X but said the decision to do so “just made sense” in the context of recent display roadmaps provided by panel manufacturers.
“Learn to love the notch,” Mr. Pei wrote on Twitter earlier today, having previously revealed that the fact the OnePlus 6 has a chin is a design cue that will remain prevalent in the industry going forward. The only handset that lacks a chin is the iPhone X, with its Samsung-made OLED panel curving inside the phone in order to have its ribbon connection mechanism that allows it to communicate with the motherboard further back, but that solution makes the phone significantly thicker, Mr. Pei said. The firm remains adamant the OnePlus 6 won’t look identical to the OPPO R15 like its last several handsets were inspired by the products from what’s widely believed to be its sister company, having also revealed the device will have a larger screen than the OnePlus 5T. The screen-to-body ratio of the phablet will hover around the 90-percent mark but its overall physical footprint shouldn’t be larger than that of the previous handset debuted last November. The OnePlus 6 will also have a headphone jack, according to a recent leak shared by industry insider Evan Blass. With the OnePlus 5T already being unavailable for purchase in most parts of the world, its successor is likely to be announced in the coming weeks, as suggested by the company’s previously employed product practices.
Learn to love the notch 😉 https://t.co/Rd9lkcksJV
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) March 28, 2018