The era of ‘hole-less’ phones is here

We’ve lost bezels and the occasional headphone jack as smartphone manufacturers attempt to innovate in their space. Admittedly, the ones who seem to be leading the charge in terms of design innovation now are the Chinese. The latest trend that might look to be the next big thing (aside from foldable phones) are “hole-less phones.” And two Chinese companies have already previewed what their take on this new trend is going to look like. 

Meizu is the first one out of the gate with the Meizu Zero. It has no headphone jack and the speaker grill is replaced by the screen acting as a speaker (similar to the Huawei Mate 20 Pro). It uses a piezoelectric transducer to turn the 5.99-inch display into a speaker. It uses tiny touch sensitive panels on the side to replace the power button and volume rocker, and it has an under-display fingerprint reader, too. Without any ports or holes, there is no SIM tray, so this phone will make use of an eSIM. File transfer and charging will be done wirelessly, too. To compensate for this, Meizu has a new wireless charging standard that promises to deliver speeds of up to 18 watts (which surpasses Huawei’s 15-watt spec). It also supports Bluetooth 5.0 and wireless USB connectivity that’s said to be as fast as USB 3.0. Without any holes, it stands that the Meizu Zero is IP68-certified, too.  

Vivo is building on its APEX concept to introduce its take on the hole-less concept. Knowing Vivo, this won’t be the final iteration of the phone but it does show what the company wants to introduce with this concept. It has a “Super Unibody” curved-glass back, notch-less screen, and no openings or cutouts in sight—similar to the Meizu Zero. The screen will also vibrate to produce sound. In place of volume rocker and power button, Vivo relies on capacitive sensors along the frame to detect touch input. As expected, this will also utilize an eSIM. What’s new with this take is the entire screen serves as a fingerprint reader, which can be considered a world’s first. It comes equipped with a dual 13- and 12-megapixel setup on the back, Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, up to 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and 5G connectivity support. 

 We’re expecting to hear more about both devices at Mobile World Congress next month.