Where is smartphone design headed ?
A little bit of history
The roots of the smartphone philosophy.
The first publicly available device to be referred to as “Smartphone” was the IBM Simon Personal Communicator (or simply “IBM Simon”), released in 1994. The term “Smartphone” was used to indicate its ability to handle both personal assistant functions and telecommunications.
Regardless of how ridiculously big and inelegant the IBM Simon seems, next to today’s devices , the basics were laid: People wanted something portable, practical and with which they can intuitively interact with.
The logical focus for the devices that followed was to slim them down until they fit in a pocket, without making any concessions on features. This focus brought us great products for the time such as the famous Nokia 3310 (2000) or the BlackBerry Quark series (2003). They contributed to bring people a more intuitive experience with a highly increased battery life — the IBM Simon had an autonomy of about an hour.
The father of modern smartphone design.
January 9th, 2007, the first version of today’s most popular smartphone was shown to the public for the first time: the iPhone 1st Gen. It is pretty safe to say that it laid down the basics of design for the following years.
The main characteristics include:
- a slate form-factor with rounded corners.
- a rectangular capacitive touchscreen surface with multi-touch support, covering most of the front of the phone (52% screen-to-body ratio).
- a main physical button on the front, allowing to reach the home screen.
- a set of two buttons on the side to manage volume: “volume rocker”
The idea is to have as few buttons as possible: no keyboard, no directional keys. Relying on a touchscreen unlocks a whole new level of flexibility — the user can intuitively manage whatever is on his screen with natural, almost physical finger gestures. And on the other side, app developers have even more room for creativity in user experience design.
The iPhone 1st gen projected Apple in a blue ocean, miles away from the competition in terms of technology, smoothness and user experience. But it didn’t take long for other manufacturers to (try to) follow the path of Apple with their own software and hardware twists. At the time, it didn’t give Apple any serious competitors. Most were bad and unsuccessful copies, trying to catch-up as well as they could to the iPhone’s refinement.
3 years after the first iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy S1 was released (picture above). It doesn’t take to be an expert to notice how similar it looks to the iPhone. Samsung has often been accused of copying Apple in its designs.
In 2011, Samsung was involved in a lawsuit by Apple, for non-respect of design patents. The characteristics involved were: a black front with rounded rectangular corners, curved surrounding bezels and a colorful grid of icons.
From 2007 to today, smartphone manufacturers proceeded to many drastic design innovations, but it is important to keep in mind that all of these were built on top of the basis that Apple set in 2007.
Today, Apple is not as strong as it was in terms of innovation, we will talk about this further. This gives some other phone manufacturers the creative role — not necessarily meaning they do it well, nor that their products are perfectly convenient on a daily usage, but they have the merit of pushing design innovation intensely.
The 3 challenges of smartphone design today.
First-off, let’s dig into theory a bit, and analyze 3 design trends that come with drawbacks when not carefully implemented.
Smartphone design is not only about creativity. We must keep in mind that a device is a complex assembly of chips, sensors and other technological components. The design must take into account the arrangement of the different parts of the frame. Behind the beautiful object, hides immeasurable hours of puzzling and headaches in order to find the “perfect’ recipe that conciliates design and experience.
We want the user to forget about all the tech inside the device.That is an important challenge of the smartphone manufacturing world.
-Let’s talk about thickness, bezels and materials.
1. Thin and elegant
Whether it be for computers, screen monitors or smartphones, manufacturers have always made their devices’ thin profile a selling point. Most of us have this thought, that thin means beautiful. They want to have something light, elegant, slick. — Steve Jobs understood this very well, and this story told by Former Apple employee Amit Chaudhary illustrates it brilliantly.
The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top. “Those are air bubbles,” he snapped. “That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.”
Manufacturers have to fit as much modern hardware as possible, while maintaining the thin shape of the device.
However, sometimes, they get too ambitious with the components they want to fit inside. The best example to illustrate this phenomenon would be the story of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
Released in 2016, it was considered by lots as the best phone of the year, for its cutting-edge technologies and great software features. The battery in the device was big at the time: 3500mAh, in such a thin device. But you guessed it, that actually didn’t play in Samsung’s favor. By the end of June, some Chinese users were complaining of overheating and exploding batteries, especially during charging. Design killed user experience.
Samsung made the battery thinner, removing thickness margins, meaning the separators between the positive and negative layers may have been too thin, increasing the chance of these elements touching and sparking. - source
It is often considered as one of the biggest manufacturing scandals. The other actors in the market should learn a lesson from Samsung’s mistakes: never compromise technology for design and be realistic about your objectives.
Furthermore, on this matter, you surely have noticed this recent trend of removing the headphone jack in flagship devices. The big wave was the Apple iPhone 7 (even though OPPO was technically the first to remove it with the Oppo Finder). The most common argument manufacturers give to explain this choice, is that it frees more room in the device to fit the components better, and have a thinner profile. However, in any case, having a headphone jack port is a good bonus — most still have so many wire-only audio devices in our setups.
For Apple, cables won’t be part of the future of tech — this is why it was important for them to take the first step in doing without them, because they have the leverage to force users to get used to wireless devices and accessories. We could consider it as an opportunity in disguise: forcing the market of connectible devices to go wireless, by increasing the demand. Apple probably was the only one with enough influence to make that market move.
Last but not least, a trend seems to have started very recently: foldable smartphones. None are available to the public yet. Samsung showcased the technology during their developer conference, and Huawei announced they already had an advanced prototype of the device. Of course the only real foldable part is the screen/touchscreen/bezel and case materials. The chips and other components are obviously not in the way of the fold. This opens to a lot of new possibilities, even though for now it is hard to know exactly the benefits of having such technology (except showing off). We will have to wait mid 2019 to see which selling points Samsung will highlight.
2. The bezel-less dream
As I said previously, only 52% of the iPhone 2g’s is covered by the screen. The rest is something that we call “bezels”: the black bars that host different hardware pieces. These include on most phone:
- the front-facing selfie camera(s)
- various light/IR/proximity sensors specific to devices
- the front facing speaker(s)
- the home button (if needed)
- the fingerprint sensor (in some cases)
(the most important of these remains the cameras and proximity/face recognition sensors. There are plenty of workarounds for the other elements. For example Xiaomi developed a new front facing speaker technology that uses vibrations in the screen to produce the sound.)
That makes a lot of hardware to fit on the front, and justifies the need to have them in a dedicated space around the screen. But, screen size is a comfort. Again, most users don’t care about seeing how their phone works or which components they have — they want something functional, that will get them covered for whatever expected need.
What if, instead, using a phone would just feel like interacting with a screen, extended to the four corners of the surface, immerging you fully in your tasks and content. Since 2017, the bezel-less phone is the current new ideal and focus for smartphone design.
The first attempt to solve the bezel problematic was in 2014, with the Sharp Aquos Crystal. The solution they found to keep the hardware on the face probably the most intuitive one: have a single bezel at the bottom, so that the three other edges were completely filled with the screen. It is the same approach the Chinese phone maker Xiaomi had (until now) for their Mi Mix series (see picture above).
The market came up with various solutions, here are some of them.
Solution 1: The notch
The most popular workaround that was generalized by Apple (with the iPhone X) is the famous and controversial “notch”. It is basically a piece of bezel, generally at the top center of the screen, that contains every passive sensors inside. The free space at its left and right display the clock, notifications, battery or signal, directly from the software.
The first time we saw a cutout on the screen to host sensors was with the Essential Phone (picture above). But since the iPhone X (2017) was released, the “notch” became a trend and (too) many manufacturers implemented it in their devices.
The opinions on this fashion are manifold. It does give more screen real estate, which is actually used to fit the status bar with its diverse components. For some people, it also gives the overall design a fresh new modern look.
On the other side, some rather see it as a half empty glass: the notch eats a part of the screen, and it can be disturbing to have an irregular screen format. One big complaint was when you play full screen videos on the iPhone X. You have two options :
1- have the video play in a smaller format so the notch doesn’t interfere with the content. 2- stretch the video to the 4 edges of the display, having the notch eat a part of it.
Solution 2: Moving parts
The first to introduce this alternative to the notch was the Chinese company Vivo, with their Vivo Nex (June 2018). Their solution was based on a simple idea: having all the required sensors in a moving mechanical part that pops out every time you need them. It counters the need of any screen borders.
Another Chinese brand, OPPO, attempted something similar on a bigger scale. Thanks to this system, they managed to have the current highest screen to surface ratio on any smartphone (93.8%) The animated image below shows the mechanism in action.
Xiaomi and Huawei ‘s take on this (Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 and Honor Magic 2) is a bit more long-term oriented: you can unveil the camera with a manual push of the screen. Indeed, a big concern with those mechanisms is how durable they are: How many movements can it support? What if sand or liquids infiltrate ? What if I drop it with the part extended?
Are consumers willing to risk having a more fragile device, for the luxury of having no bezels?
Solution 3: Keeping thin bezels after all
Samsung has been part of the “no-notch resistance” in their flagships from the beginning. Since their “infinity display”, the side bezels disappeared, leaving us only with thin top and bottom ones. But does it really matter?
After seeing how smartphone design changed in 2018, part of the tech community took a step back and wondered if having no bezels at all was actually a good thing. In the end, everything considered, is the consumer really getting more value with all these workarounds?
Would have it only been for the speakers, it is a fact that the best sound experience is delivered by two front facing speakers on the top and bottom bezels. Do we hate bezels to the point of sacrificing sound quality & immersion, to not see them?
While I was writing this, the tech YouTuber Arun Maini (MrWhoseTheBoss) tweeted a poll asking “Which is the current best solution for the notch”.
almost 7,000 people answered. Although the sample isn’t much representative, the big winner is in fact “Bezels”. While still being cool concepts, maybe all the notch alternatives are not that handy on a daily use.
Other solutions
You probably noticed “Secondary Display” as a choice in the poll and wondered what it is. The Chinese brand Nubia really thought outside the box and came with a creative solution: have no front facing camera, but have a screen on the back surface of the phone that can mirror the main display. This way, if you want to take a selfie just turn the device around, use the rear cameras and see the result directly on the back screen.
On the other hand, there has been a lot of rumors concerning the next generation of Samsung Galaxy devices. A leak from a Samsung display conference. A slide was shown mentioning an “Under Panel Sensor” and “Sound on Display”. Has Samsung managed to hide all the sensors we were worrying about and the sound behind their AMOLED display? We will see in 2019. This would appear to be the best solution for a bezel less device.
A quick note about the bottom bezel : the reason most smartphones can’t pull their screen to the very bottom of the edge is that the process would be very expensive. — every screen has a connector that sits at the edge of it, it is often placed at the bottom. The only way we can get rid of it is by bending the screen on itself 180 degrees and connect it underneath. The process is delicate and very technical, so most manufacturers choose to leave it flat and have a chin.
3. Materials & Colors
Materials
In the early days of tech (first years of 2000), the most widely used building materials of the covers and bezels were either plastic or some kind of painted aluminum. It was probably the most practical, and at the time design was not a major priority.
Today material is part of the challenges faced by the designing team. Consumers might be using their phone for quite a time, so the device better be good looking eye-candy but also durable and practical. Spoiler: today we don’t have the perfect material that checks these three boxes.
But here is my list of the different materials used for the outside of the phone:
- Plastic: Cheap, solid with a certain flexibility, good grasp, but toy-ish look, can be subject to scratches.
- Aluminum: Slick, Scratch resistant, very durable but heavy, bendable, blocks electromagnetic waves (manufacturers place antena bands to prevent it).
- Glass: Elegant and modern looking, allows wireless charging, but fragile, slippery in the hands, easily catches fingerprints.
- Ceramic: Elegant like glass and a lot more resistant to scratches, better electromagnetic signals through it, good heat resistance, but breaks easily on impact, can feel heavy, expensive to make.
- Carbon Fiber: Good balance between lightweight and durable, can have a premium look, but expensive to make, scratchable, can shatter.
It is most likely that smartphones will continue evolving using these materials for the exterior part. Glass has been the big trend recently, but as it presents many drawbacks, we could see manufacturers trying out new materials that look as elegant but more durable (ceramic was a good try).
Of course, you all know the example of glass back smartphones that shatter on impact. It is indeed a symbolic case of design disserving usage.
But let me show you a more recent and particular case. Let’s take the Google Pixel 3 XL (2018) as a recent case study of an issue with the outside materials of the phone. Traditionally, the back of Google Pixels is composed of two materials: a piece of glass on the top part, and a metal or metal with plastic piece for the larger bottom part.
The third generation of pixels, however had the bottom part made out of some sort of frosted glass material, that had a very soft texture.
Even though it feels pretty good in the hand, the surface has the disadvantage of being very sensible to scratches. The tech community named the phenomenon the “Scratch Gate”. If you have your Pixel 3 in the same pocket as your keys, chances are you might end up with the back of the phone scratched. As shown on the video of Unbox Therapy about the subject, the scratches can be erased with your finger, but deeper ones tend to leave their mark permanently on the texture. For the price, you might want a phone with more durable materials.
Colors
By default, the smartphone makers have always bet on sober tones such as white or metallic grey and also black. They look good and go well with pretty much any color. Having a neutral color is also easier for the sales and manufacturing organisation of the product, to have one or two variants rather than trying to develop a variant for every possible taste. The HTC Sensation 4G (2011) for example had a plastic back composed of three different parts cut out with each different greys.
But progressively, they understood that giving more color options to the buyer represented a solid added value. Consumers want to express themselves, even in the design of their tech products — and this is more and more true.
Apple understood this quite early by the end of 2013 with the iPhone 5c. It was the first iPhone model to be natively available in a various range of colors (picture above), giving it a fresh new look.
Today, Apple still continues on this colorful path for some of their devices. The very recent iPhone XR (September 2018) was released in 6 different colors.
Releasing a new color for a current product is also a good strategy in order to increase sales. The costs are way lower than developing a new product, but the communication is very similar to as if it was new. We could use the example of the iPhone 8 (Product Red edition), released 2 months after the original. But the case of the OnePlus 5T is also interesting.
Released in November 2017, it already had a huge success at it’s scale. The device was available in black and white at first. During February 2018. OnePlus announced they would release a “Lava Red” edition of their OnePlus 5T for Valentines Day. The media coverage was efficient and it gave a new fresh breathe to the already 3 months old device. Successful operation. The sales did well, especially considering it happened 2 months before the announcement of the OnePlus 6.
Additionally, we tend to forget that smartphones don’t necessarily need to be monochromatic. Some parts can be of a different color than other ones. Google added a nice little touch to their Pixel 2 devices. The white and black “panda” version of the Pixel 2 had an orange power button. It is a very small detail, but it adds a lot to the finish, in my opinion.
In coherence with the “glass back” trend that has been going on for a few years (Galaxy S7, iPhone 8…), the reflection of the back can be used to further shape the smartphone’s design. You can take advantage of the color it reflects, and the way it shapes the reflection.
The Huawei P20 Pro (as seen on the picture right above), has been praised by some, for its beautiful “Twilight” shade. The back of the phone is a reflective surface reflecting a gradient: going from a dark night blue at the top transitioning to a lighter one to the bottom. It looks great, depending on the angle you look at it, it has some nice purple reflections.
Huawei came up with a creative way to take advantage of the reflective back.
At the moment I am writing this article, OnePlus announced a new color variant of their 6T model: Thunder Purple.
Regardless of the nice back gradient like on the P20 Pro, we notice that the Chinese brand played with the reflexion, distorting the light going through in an “S” shape. Small detail indeed, but it adds a nice spice to the overall design. Honor did something similar with the Honor 10 , distorting the light reflections into lines going through the phone back vertically.
The idea is not limited to what I’ve showed you here. The concept could be brought further and get to even more interesting designs.
Conclusion
All these current design concepts we went through pretty much represent the short-term challenges that today’s smartphone makers face. The competition is ferocious, amplified by the huge number of actors. Chinese markets, who have for long been considered as copycats of western models, reveal a great sense of innovation and quality (with super competitive prices).
Creativity is going strong in many ways, but only in the comfortable boundaries of the lines that the iPhone 2G defined in 2007. And it might be going like this for the next 7 years, before a revolutionary design or concept replaces it.
Out of the boundaries, into the future.
In the beginning of this article, we saw how the first iPhone strictly shaped the design of future smartphones: a rectangle shape, with a touchscreen as the main interaction medium, and a couple of buttons for ease of access to some functionalities.
But let us take a step back, and try not to take for granted the classic rectangular shape and all the rest. Let us think outside the box we’ve been in since 2007.
At first, the term smartphone designed a telecommunicator that could also serve personal assistant functions. Of course, the definition has changed a lot since then, and customers expect a lot more from their device —
a quality camera and microphone to interact with the physical environment (and of course take great pictures), a powerful enough chip to run games or other resource hungry activities, and most importantly a nice intuitive software and ecosystem that unlocks full connection to the world through whatever web service or app.
To fully take advantage of these features, we need to think of:
-How can the user interact with the device?
-How is the device going to answer the user/return information?
Because that is what the fundamental issue of design is all about.
The Gartner Hype Cycle gives us an overview on the state of upcoming technologies. It places them in a time frame, predicting the time it will take for them to be mature and useable on a global scale.
As we saw, technology shapes design. If our smartphones today consist in a rectangular touch sensitive surface, it’s probably because to this day, the most intuitive and practical technology we have for interacting with such device is the “touch screen”. But what if this Gartner Hype Cycle included some technologies that could potentially dethrone touch screens?
Augmented Reality (& Mixed Reality)
Looking at the graph, we have already been over the hype for this technology, and it might get to an even more mature point in 5-10 years.
Companies such as Apple or Google have invested a lot in creating frameworks to help a cleaner and faster implementation of augmented reality (ARkit & ARcore, respectively). (Paul Reynolds wrote a great article about it.)
Could the superposition of virtual objects in a real world environment be the next most common solution for displaying information and user interface?
We could imagine some more advanced version of Google Glass or HoloLens, displaying what you need right in front of your eyes. The interaction could happen through eye-tracking technologies or voice commands. Today this kind of technology is expensive, but let’s see where competition pushes it.
Human Augmentation
Looking even further into the future, Human Augmentation is on the verge of reaching its peak of inflated expectations. Gartner defines it like this :
The field of human augmentation (sometimes referred to as “Human 2.0”) focuses on creating cognitive and physical improvements as an integral part of the human body.
Technically speaking, the smartphones we have today are indeed creating “cognitive improvements” to its users (reminding him about traffic, meetings, weather, helping him calculate, understand any language…).
But imagine having all the functionalities we use today, directly integrated in our bodies, as an improvement of our capabilities. Sounds a lot like science-fiction but prototypes on relatively large scales have already risen.
Very recently, about 3000 Swedish people accepted to have a chip implemented under their skin, in order to replace transportation tickets, ID, authentication methods. There are no boundaries in the possibilities of human augmentation, it could come in radically different shapes and forms.
Imagination is the limit
Imagination is the only limit for trying to predict the smartphone of the future. Some technologies seem already perfectly adapted to serve the same purpose as the smartphone or contribute to its development. Some however, don’t yet seem relevant to that same purpose, but bridges will be built, innovations will be associated to make even better ones.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” -Steve Jobs
It’s all about which connections we will make between all the next available technologies and processes. Watching the WIP technologies might give us some ideas of obvious connections that will be made, but there is a big space for creative associations that don’t seem obvious.
Who would have thought in 1967 that the military tool “ARPANET”, would be today used by billions of people, to watch cat videos and take pictures of themselves with dog filters ?
Beyond the looks, smartphones represent the most advanced and popular creation that humanity was able to build. Whatever the color, shape or material, it is an amazing instrument, connecting you to the whole world, enabling you with unlimited possibilities. Fierce competition in the industry constantly pushes innovation towards cutting edge technologies, wrapped in the sleekest and most intuitive designs.
“The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.” — John Lasseter
