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Unpopular opinion: I actually PREFER the Pixel 4 design

7412

And by that I mean: just rocking a good ol' top bezel.

 

For a variety of reasons. I personally don't care about face ID, but for those who do, the top bezel allows for a more secure experience.

But going with the top bezel also leaves room for more important features: better speakers, and our beloved notification LED. I miss the last one in particular in my current bezeless phone.

A top bezel doesn't get in the way of your screen like a punch hole or a notch does.

 

Too bad Pixel devices have the worst battery life of any Android though.

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I will always choose a top bezel over a hideous notch or punch hole. Fortunately, a few manufacturers invested in a pop-up camera (the best solution), so I got one of those instead. Only problem is a dysfunctional proximity sensor and no notification LED, but I've slowly learned to live without those.

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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Yeah. I don't mind the forehead. Tons better than the punch hole design Samsung is using.

 

Not sure what the complaint is with Pixel battery life. I get two solid days off my Pixel 4 XL.

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10 minutes ago, TomvanWijnen said:

Fortunately, a few manufacturers invested in a pop-up camera (the best solution), so I got one of those instead

Yep, same. The OnePlus 7 Pro was my favourite phone of last year, and the 8 felt like a downgrade rather than an upgrade.

Picked up the Poco F2 Pro instead.

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18 hours ago, TomvanWijnen said:

I will always choose a top bezel over a hideous notch or punch hole. Fortunately, a few manufacturers invested in a pop-up camera (the best solution), so I got one of those instead. Only problem is a dysfunctional proximity sensor and no notification LED, but I've slowly learned to live without those.

“Hideous notch” that you never notice...

Dirty Windows Peasants :P ?

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1 hour ago, Lord Vile said:

“Hideous notch” that you never notice...

A hideous notch that you always notice. The first thing that I notice when I see a phone with a notch is the notch. And after a while it's still the notch. Notches look like phone tumours, I don't want my phone to have an illness.

 

EDIT: by the way, a notch means that there's much less space for notification icons, which is also a problem. Currently my entire notification bar is full. Having 4 or more icons being cut away would definitely be an issue.

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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2 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Sorry?

 

I've actually tried this app, even bought the premium version. But I dropped it after a few days, because it's still too clunky. When you want to unlock your phone, it has to first "disable" the notification screen, and then you can unlock. 

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2 hours ago, TomvanWijnen said:

A hideous notch that you always notice. The first thing that I notice when I see a phone with a notch is the notch. And after a while it's still the notch. Notches look like phone tumours, I don't want my phone to have an illness.

 

EDIT: by the way, a notch means that there's much less space for notification icons, which is also a problem. Currently my entire notification bar is full. Having 4 or more icons being cut away would definitely be an issue.

You’ve never used a phone with a notch have you 

Dirty Windows Peasants :P ?

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3 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

You’ve never used a phone with a notch have you 

I have used a phone with a notch (not my own phone of course).

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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10 hours ago, TomvanWijnen said:

I have used a phone with a notch (not my own phone of course).

Yeah so you don’t know after using for a day or so your mind ignores the notch and you don’t really see it. 

Dirty Windows Peasants :P ?

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You know what I'd rather have? Just proper bezels round the whole screen. They serve the important purpose of allowing you to hold it without activating the touch screen accidentally, and accidentally drop it without the screen being wrecked.

 

And for @TomvanWijnen and others saying that manufacturers should use pop-up cameras.... just why? I can't think of a better example of a solution looking for a problem.

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pythonmegapixel

into tech, public transport and architecture // amateur programmer // youtuber // beginner photographer

Thanks for reading all this by the way!

By the way, my desktop is a docked laptop. Get over it, No seriously, I have an exterrnal monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, ethernet and cooling fans all connected. Using it feels no different to a desktop, it works for several hours if the power goes out, and disconnecting just a few cables gives me something I can take on the go. There's enough power for all games I play and it even copes with basic (and some not-so-basic) video editing. Give it a go - you might just love it.

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4 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Just proper bezels round the whole screen.

We already have that in most phones. If you pick the few that have curved screens, it's on you. Your pick. There are plenty of options available with flat screens.

 

6 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

and others saying that manufacturers should use pop-up cameras.... just why?

Because there haven't been any issue with pop-up cameras yet. No big drama, nobody complaining about them. It's great for privacy, it allows you to have a full screen experience. It's great.

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5 minutes ago, 7412 said:

We already have that in most phones. If you pick the few that have curved screens, it's on you. Your pick. There are plenty of options available with flat screens.

The bezels are so tiny that they provide virtually no protection and might as well not be there.

On my Moto G6, the supplied cover is so close to touching the screen that to activate the things in the corners I have to actually be touching the edge of the case.

 

5 minutes ago, 7412 said:

Because there haven't been any issue with pop-up cameras yet. No big drama, nobody complaining about them. It's great for privacy, it allows you to have a full screen experience. It's great.

However, they are an entirely needless moving part. What happens when you accidentaly open the camera with it pressed against something and burn out the motor? What happens if the mechanism just wears out?

 

So many innovations in computing have been to do with removing moving parts; it just seems like a backwards step to put them back in for the sake of it.

 

Also I don't understand the term "full screen experience" - your apps still take up the entire screen, no matter where the camera is!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

pythonmegapixel

into tech, public transport and architecture // amateur programmer // youtuber // beginner photographer

Thanks for reading all this by the way!

By the way, my desktop is a docked laptop. Get over it, No seriously, I have an exterrnal monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, ethernet and cooling fans all connected. Using it feels no different to a desktop, it works for several hours if the power goes out, and disconnecting just a few cables gives me something I can take on the go. There's enough power for all games I play and it even copes with basic (and some not-so-basic) video editing. Give it a go - you might just love it.

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1 hour ago, Lord Vile said:

Yeah so you don’t know after using for a day or so your mind ignores the notch and you don’t really see it. 

Of course not, I wouldn't buy a hideous laptop, just like I wouldn't buy a hideous phone. If I'm going to buy a phone for the next 5+ years, I want it to look at least somewhat decent. A notch is just a useless obstruction that will always get in the way. Also, if the notch actually leaves out parts that I use on a daily basis (like notification icons, parts of a browser, and parts of pictures when you zoom in) , then surely I will continue to notice it.

 

13 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

And for @TomvanWijnen and others saying that manufacturers should use pop-up cameras.... just why? I can't think of a better example of a solution looking for a problem.

Pop-up cameras are great for people like me. It's just getting rid of a stupid thing I never use anyways. I don't care much about privacy and such, but I do have to admit that it is nice that the camera is always hidden. And though I see your point, and agree that top bezels aren't bad (one example I can think of is the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, that looks quite sleek, and definitely much better than a notch or punchhole), having the full extra space above is quite nice (if your fingers are long enough) and it does improve the experience in my opinion (more screen real estate in the same size - I went from a 5.5" phone to a 6.67" phone and it only increased in size by 1 cm vertically).

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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3 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

However, they are an entirely needless moving part. What happens when you accidentaly open the camera with it pressed against something and burn out the motor? What happens if the mechanism just wears out?

They are made to accept such resistance and will stop extending in such a case. Also, when you drop your phone, they immediately close (just tested it now, in a drop of about 10 cm it already closed). The pop up camera on my phone is rated for 300,000 pops, more than 150 times per day for 5 years (googled that), so that's quite a lot of pictures. For me it could just as well be 1000 times, because I never use the front facing camera anyways (no point in it).

 

7 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

So many innovations in computing have been to do with removing moving parts; it just seems like a backwards step to put them back in for the sake of it.

Not for the sake of it, it's for adding more screen estate in the same size phone, without a different dumb solution like a notch or punch hole.

 

8 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Also I don't understand the term "full screen experience" - your apps still take up the entire screen, no matter where the camera is!

Full screen experience is not correct indeed, it should be "full phone experience"; utilising the most of the size already used.

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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19 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

However, they are an entirely needless moving part. What happens when you accidentaly open the camera with it pressed against something and burn out the motor? What happens if the mechanism just wears out?

 

They're tested for such things. Even Zack is okay with them. I'm not concerned.

They won't fail for years, I'm pretty sure there will be countless other reasons to switch phone (outdated hardware, dead battery, dropped one time too many, outdated Android...) long before the pop-up camera starts to wear out.

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1 hour ago, TomvanWijnen said:

Of course not, I wouldn't buy a hideous laptop, just like I wouldn't buy a hideous phone. If I'm going to buy a phone for the next 5+ years, I want it to look at least somewhat decent. A notch is just a useless obstruction that will always get in the way. Also, if the notch actually leaves out parts that I use on a daily basis (like notification icons, parts of a browser, and parts of pictures when you zoom in) , then surely I will continue to notice it.

 

Pop-up cameras are great for people like me. It's just getting rid of a stupid thing I never use anyways. I don't care much about privacy and such, but I do have to admit that it is nice that the camera is always hidden. And though I see your point, and agree that top bezels aren't bad (one example I can think of is the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, that looks quite sleek, and definitely much better than a notch or punchhole), having the full extra space above is quite nice (if your fingers are long enough) and it does improve the experience in my opinion (more screen real estate in the same size - I went from a 5.5" phone to a 6.67" phone and it only increased in size by 1 cm vertically).

Aside from it doesn’t get in the way because the top part of the phone is barely used anyway? You might lose 1/8 of an inch of vertical space vs a phone with no bezel at all but when has a single line of text really mattered? If you like the bezels so much I don’t see your aversion to the notch where it’s essentially just displaying the time and battery effectively in the bezel. 
 

Moving parts are never great why do you think the tech industry as a whole has been moving away from them. 

Dirty Windows Peasants :P ?

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13 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Aside from it doesn’t get in the way because the top part of the phone is barely used anyway? You might lose 1/8 of an inch of vertical space vs a phone with no bezel at all but when has a single line of text really mattered? If you like the bezels so much I don’t see your aversion to the notch where it’s essentially just displaying the time and battery effectively in the bezel. 

I just gave three examples of when the top part of the phone is used.

A single line of text does sometimes matter. More space is more better.

Like I said, I just gave three examples in the post you quoted. A notch removes needed space for notification icons, and it looks terrible, and that for something I don't even use.

 

[EDIT: I just naturally found another reason: if you use your phone horizontally, it will cut away part of what you would like to see.]

 

13 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Moving parts are never great why do you think the tech industry as a whole has been moving away from them. 

I might be missing something, but I haven't seen the tech industry moving away from moving parts (foldable phones are actually sort of coming back :P). SSDs don't count because they have many other advantages, and electric engines also don't count because they also have many other advantages.

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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3 hours ago, TomvanWijnen said:

I just gave three examples of when the top part of the phone is used.

A single line of text does sometimes matter. More space is more better.

Like I said, I just gave three examples in the post you quoted. A notch removes needed space for notification icons, and it looks terrible, and that for something I don't even use.

 

[EDIT: I just naturally found another reason: if you use your phone horizontally, it will cut away part of what you would like to see.]

 

I might be missing something, but I haven't seen the tech industry moving away from moving parts (foldable phones are actually sort of coming back :P). SSDs don't count because they have many other advantages, and electric engines also don't count because they also have many other advantages.

You didn’t though you gave examples that either aren’t really valid and can easily be done with a notch. For example missing parts from a browser, what parts exactly? 
 

SSDs do count because cheaper ones don’t have speed advantages over mechanical HDDs. HDDs also have advantages over SSDs. Disc drives have gone off of pretty much all laptops now SD have the majority of buttons on phones with only the volume rocker and a lock/on off button left. Headphones buttons have been replaced by touch controls and what is the major issue with folding phones? The folding mechanism getting crap caught in it and breaking. 

Dirty Windows Peasants :P ?

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11 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

You didn’t though you gave examples that either aren’t really valid and can easily be done with a notch. For example missing parts from a browser, what parts exactly? 

Perhaps they aren't valid for you, but they certainly are valid for me. I sometimes have a lot of notifications, a notch remove the space necessary for those. I often zoom in on pictures, a notch would put a massive hole in those. I have a full screen browser, so a notch would take a part out of the top. There often are things exactly on the top on sites that I visit, those would get cut out and I would have to zoom in sideways to see them. When holding your phone horizontally, it will also take a bite out of whatever you're viewing.

 

17 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

SSDs do count because cheaper ones don’t have speed advantages over mechanical HDDs. HDDs also have advantages over SSDs. Disc drives have gone off of pretty much all laptops now SD have the majority of buttons on phones with only the volume rocker and a lock/on off button left. Headphones buttons have been replaced by touch controls and what is the major issue with folding phones? The folding mechanism getting crap caught in it and breaking. 

Even the cheaper SSDs have considerable speed advantages over mechanical HDDs, and otherwise they are much smaller (phone memory or eMMC could be slower than HDDs, but HDDs can't really exist in their size). Disc drives have other disadvantages like being large, not that fast, aren't as easy to use, and can't easily be put in things like cameras. The only button that I've seen disappear from phones is the camera button, but even that was already more than a decade ago. In fact, they're returning with buttons like Bixby and my OnePlus 7 Pro's alert slider - the first extra button/slider that I've had since I owned smartphones. All headphones I know of (and they aren't exactly cheap) still have buttons on them. And, yes, folding phones aren't ideal so far, but they're a "new" thing that's being developed right now.

PC SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @4.4GHz - Mobo: Asrock Extreme 4 (Z77) - GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB - RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB (8GB) 1600MHz CL8 + 1x8GB - Storage: SSD: Sandisk Extreme II 120GB. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - PSU: be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W semi modular  - Case: Corsair Obsidian 450D  - OS: Windows 7

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4 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Moving parts are never great why do you think the tech industry as a whole has been moving away from them. 

Come on! You can say that for notches too, they are never great and thats why manufacturers are finding solutions to completely remove them.

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On 8/11/2020 at 5:16 PM, 7412 said:

And by that I mean: just rocking a good ol' top bezel.

 

For a variety of reasons. I personally don't care about face ID, but for those who do, the top bezel allows for a more secure experience.

But going with the top bezel also leaves room for more important features: better speakers, and our beloved notification LED. I miss the last one in particular in my current bezeless phone.

A top bezel doesn't get in the way of your screen like a punch hole or a notch does.

 

Too bad Pixel devices have the worst battery life of any Android though.

I thought the LG G6 nailed it in terms of bezels, slim enough to not get in the way but thick enough to provide what was needed. These phones going for 'all screen displays' are a terrible idea. I would however disagree with Pixel devices having terrible battery life, my 3a can go for more than a day of use and it's got a puny battery (3000 I think). I guess it just depends on the person but I love it and am seriously considering the next gen version.

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