Is it possible Samsung is using consumers as the guinea pigs for its experiment of finding the perfect punch-hole display, or at least the perfect placement of display cutouts, while it works on true all-screen displays that have the selfie camera(s) under the screen? It sure seems like it to me as we inch closer to the Galaxy Note 10's launch, and I'm not sure I can pinpoint why.
Well, okay, I can point out why I feel like that: That centered camera hole in the Galaxy Note 10's display. When the Galaxy S10 came out, Samsung made a big deal about its Infinity-O display and how it removes “interruptions from your view” by having no notches or distractions, even though you do have a camera hole on the screen's top-right corner. And on the Galaxy S10+, that dual camera cutout isn't too far off from a notch when you consider the space it takes up and how distracting it can be, at least in the initial few weeks.
No Galaxy Note 10 model is expected to have an unsightly pill-shaped dual front camera cutout, but why has the camera cutout moved to the center? Samsung will probably have a few reasons, and I'm willing to bet that one of those reasons is that it found the centered cutout makes for a more symmetric design. And it would make sense for a device codenamed Da Vinci – one of Leonardo Da Vinci's most popular works is his drawing of the Vitruvian Man, which is “often used as an implied symbol of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension, the symmetry of the universe as a whole.”
Why did Samsung not think ahead when designing the Galaxy S10?
Another reason could be the fact that the S Pen doesn't allow enough space for a camera cutout on the top-right corner of the display. But, are all those reasons something we should be concerned about? Shouldn't Samsung have thought things through and planned for the future when designing those Infinity-O displays for the Galaxy S10? If it were the Galaxy S11 that would introduce the centered camera cutout, I probably wouldn't complain. What troubles me is the fact that Samsung is ditching the Infinity-O display that it introduced just six to eight months ago.
It's almost like those ill-conceived rear-mounted fingerprint sensors from the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 all over again. At the Galaxy S9 launch, Samsung proudly announced that it had listened to customer feedback and decided to put the fingerprint sensor below the rear camera, covering up for a major design flaw that shouldn't have made it to the final product. It will probably do something similar for the Galaxy Note 10, but I'm not sure we should be letting the company get away with its indecisiveness and poor long-term vision for smartphone design, not when it involves shelling out a substantial sum of money.
