The Samsung Galaxy S10 series’ Dynamic AMOLED display is one of the best-looking panels the mobile market has to offer, so unsurprisingly a new subreddit specifically for Galaxy S10 wallpapers was created recently, allowing enthusiasts to share their own creations with the community. As of Thursday, it already has nearly 5,000 subscribers.
The Dynamic AMOLED panel employed by the new series is great, but it’s not perfect. Samsung’s latest flagships attempt to solve the display notch issue with a punch-hole in the upper-right corner of the screen where the front-facing camera resides, and evidently, this has sparked mixed feelings from mobile enthusiasts.
Nevertheless, what some people could call a design flaw actually inspired other users to create wallpapers that take advantage of the panel’s unusual characteristic. As detailed earlier this month, some users have creatively integrated the display cutout into their wallpaper designs.
To a small degree, this idea was somewhat inspired by Samsung itself. All of the official colorful wallpapers launched with the Galaxy S10 series are considerably darker in the upper-right corner, and this is no coincidence. Samsung wanted to make the display cutout less obvious. Users did too, except their approach was completely different.
Now there’s an entire new subreddit dedicated to wallpapers for the Samsung Galaxy S10 series. Most continue to embrace the display cutout, with numerous users trying to integrate the characteristic into their images, while other users have provided base images and ideas for Galaxy S10 owners to explore. The subreddit is not entirely dedicated to the punch hole-based wallpaper concept but Galaxy S10 wallpapers in general, so there should be something of interest for everyone.
The new series consists of the Galaxy S10 with an edge-to-edge curved display and a circular cutout, as well as the Galaxy S10e which has a similar cutout except it employs a flat panel. The Samsung Galaxy S10+ has two front-facing cameras, which means that the shape of the cutout is more rectangular with rounded corners.
The upcoming 5G-enabled model is expected to have a similar design but judging from official renders, its cutout is a bit wider compared to the Samsung Galaxy S10+ because it adopts a Time-of-Flight (ToF) front-facing sensor.
In essence, this means that the wallpapers created to embrace the Galaxy S10+’ punch hole won’t be properly aligned for the 5G model, and this could lead to yet another wave of creative designs from the Samsung community.
But given enough time, this will become a passing trend. Smartphone OEMs are working on ways to hide the front-facing camera behind the screen without requiring a special cutout or notch, and other manufacturers have already decided to implement pop-up cameras for some of their models.
The punch hole trend is likely to continue for Samsung for a while, and the upcoming Galaxy Note 10 is also expected to share the same display characteristic as the new Galaxy S models, but eventually, the display cutouts are expected to disappear altogether, whether it will be next year or the years after that.
Samsung’s latest flagship was supposed to start shipping tomorrow – March 8 – but recent reports revealed that the device is actually shipping a bit earlier than scheduled in some cases.