Dan Frommer: ‘Samsung’s Galaxy S8 Shows Apple Is Behind the Smartphone Design Trend’

Dan Frommer, writing for Recode:

While Apple pioneered the all-screen phone concept with the first iPhone, Samsung and other companies have recently pushed it further, trimming the frame around the display so much that the forehead and chin on the new Galaxy S8 are barely there.

For another example, Andy Rubin — the founder of Android, and before that one of the people behind the Sidekick phone — recently tweeted a teaser photo of another slick-looking, edge-to-edge device, presumably from the handset company he’s working on, called Essential.

Rubin’s teaser shot for the Essential truly is impressive — it shows a true edge-to-edge design, with almost no bezels on either the sides or the top and bottom. Looks very cool. But: it’s vaporware. Shipping is what counts, and the Galaxy S8 is shipping.

I’ve been hearing that Apple is working on an “edge-to-edge” iPhone design since early last year. If Apple truly eliminates the chin and forehead, they’ll leap ahead of Samsung. But I don’t see how anyone can deny that Samsung is ahead in the race to eliminate bezels.

There’s a lot more to “design” than how a phone looks from the front, though. And to me, the Galaxy S8 looks like it was only designed with the front face in mind. I don’t think the back looks good, and the placement of the fingerprint scanner is undeniably awkward. And the ports and speaker holes on the bottom are, as usual for Samsung, misaligned.

★ Saturday, 1 April 2017