Because not everyone can get their hands on flexible OLED displays, Chinese smartphone makers like Oppo are forced to get creative when it comes to their smartphone designs. The latest trend they seem to be focusing on are bezels. Before you get ahead of yourself, we’re not talking about bezels on the the top and bottom — we’re talking about side bezels.
Oppo is gearing up to announce a new smartphone and to prepare for its launch, it appears they’ve been seeding their own leaks to hype it up a bit. The phone — which still remains nameless — was “leaked” to Chinese tech outlets, and shows a phone running Oppo’s Color OS (which, we should add, is in desperate need of an overhaul) with stupid small bezels along the sides. According to an Oppo patent, the manufacturer is further adding to the illusion of a completely edge-to-edge display by using light refraction, similar to something we saw on the Sharp Aquos Crystal and the Moto 360’s displays.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a device with stupid small side bezels. There was also the Meizu MX4 or last year’s Sharp AQUOS Crystal which manged to also eliminate the top bezel for a phone that looked more upside down than anything. Last week, Gizmochina also uncovered the LeTV X900, another Chinese smartphone with virtually non-existent side bezels and uses a USB Type-C connector.
We’ll have to admit, side bezels have never been a pain-point for us when it comes to smartphone design. Super thick bottom bezels (with black logo bars), really slick phones that slip out of your hand, or rear facing speakers — now those are a few things that really grind our gears. While having a phone with super small side bezels wont actually make it easier to hold or add any functionality in any way (kind of like the curved display on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge), it sure does look pretty.
