Android phones everywhere are adopting Apple’s iPhone X design

Hollis
Johnson

• In the 12 months since the iPhone X was released to the
  public, many phone makers have copied its signature design
  feature: the notch, or cutout, at the top center of the
  phone.
• Notches weren’t “a thing” until the iPhone X came
  along.
• Years from now, when Apple and others eventually
  eliminate the notches from their phones, we’ll wonder why
  competitors didn’t try to leapfrog the iPhone when they had the
  chance.

Last year, Apple unveiled a smartphone that looked completely
different from all the other phones on the market.

Thirteen months later, that design is everywhere. 

Here’s the OnePlus 6.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business
Insider

Here’s the LG G7 ThinQ.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business
Insider

Here’s the Huawei P20 Pro.

Huawei

Here’s the Asus Zenfone 5.

Asus

And here’s the all-new Pixel 3 XL from Google, announced
this week.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

See any similarities?

All of these smartphones have what people typically call a
“notch,” or a cut-out at the top center of the phone. Though

Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone was actually the first to
introduce this design a few months before the iPhone X last year,
it wasn’t officially “a thing” until the iPhone X went on
sale.

Google, in particular, is driving the adoption of notches
among Android phones. Aside from the new Pixel 3 XL, Google’s
latest version of Android, its smartphone operating system,

supports notched smartphone designs, which will make it
easier for other Android phone makers to build those kinds of
phones. Great.

Copying Apple, for better or worse, is nothing new

Apple’s smartphone designs have inspired the industry, and
countless imitators, for years. Fingerprint sensors and virtual
assistants weren’t “a thing” until Apple put those features in an
iPhone. These days, you can’t find a smartphone without
those features.

Phone
makers started including fingerprint sensors on their devices
after Apple debuted Touch ID on iPhone 5S in
2013.

Nicole
Kasper/Flickr (CC)

It happened again this year. In the 12 months since Apple
unveiled the iPhone X, with its edge-to-edge display and “notch”
at the top of the phone, numerous phone makers have introduced
new smartphones that look just like the iPhone X — notch and all.

What’s particularly funny is that the notch, in many ways,
represents an imperfection with current smartphones.
Apple specifically said the goal of the iPhone X was to make
a smartphone that was “all screen” — and based on that
definition, the iPhone X falls just short. That notch, though it
powers a highly sophisticated security system, is the only
blemish on an otherwise seamless display. It is edge-to-edge,
technically, but not “all screen.”

Android phone makers are squandering a golden opportunity to
leapfrog Apple

What’s interesting is how few phone makers are even trying to
solve this problem, as if the notch is not a clear design flaw.

To give credit where it’s due, some companies are trying
different things. Samsung chose not to go down the notch path at
all with its Galaxy S and Note phones, and a handful of smaller
companies, like Chinese startup Vivo, are
experimenting with ways to hide the selfie camera when it’s
not in use. Still, many companies, including Google, have simply
accepted the notch without challenging it, or at least shrinking
it.

Perhaps some phone makers think it’s better to look like the
competition than to try something different. But some day,
probably soon, the iPhone will no longer have a notch, and other
phone makers will then follow suit, eliminating the notches from
their own phones. And we’ll look back on this time — the Notch
Era — and shake our heads in wonderment. We’ll ask: Why did so
many phone makers simply follow Apple, when they had a golden
opportunity to jump ahead?