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I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs. Some thoughtful juggling of the status bar, some added interaction,

I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs. Some thoughtful juggling of the status bar, some added interaction, and you're all set. A reasonable trade-off. What I cannot understand at all is the compromise in landscape mode, for games and video. Rather than just black out the uneven area and limit the drawable area to the largest unbroken rectangle, everything Apple shows appears partially obscured by the notch. The AR game example literally has the notch starting to eat into the UI. In my book, this leaps from "acceptable trade-off" to "bizarre sacrifice." It's like living with a cracked corner of the screen, right out of the box.

jmull 9y ago
I think it's good to leave that up to the app developer. They can choose to use the space around the notch or crop it.
- dperfect 9y ago
  It's not as significant as the notch, but the corners of the display area are also rounded off, so the screen has some fairly interesting effective geometry in terms of viewable pixels. I wonder if the graphics and UI SDKs will have built-in functions to determine where these boundaries are (as they're likely to change in future models), or if developers will just be expected to work around them as best they can.
  - ricketycricket 9y ago
    New metrics covered at https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/fall2017/801/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/fall2017/801/
- dlubarov 9y ago
  I imagine most developers won't want to design a tweaked layout specifically for the iPhone X. As a compromise, developers will probably just avoid putting important UI elements near the horizontal edges, similar to what console developers used to do to accommodate older TVs [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television)
- dweekly 9y ago
  Apple is asking devs not to crop it. "Don't mask or call special attention to key display features. Don't attempt to hide the device's rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don't use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas either." https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/iphone-x/ https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o...
  - moduspol 9y ago
    That's one interpretation. Cropping video content doesn't necessarily fall into that, yet I can see how some other designs would and why they would want developers to avoid that. Besides, there's also: > Be mindful of aspect ratio differences when reusing existing artwork. iPhone X has a different aspect ratio than 4.7" iPhones. As a result, full-screen 4.7" iPhone artwork appears cropped or letterboxed when displayed full-screen on iPhone X. Likewise, full-screen iPhone X artwork appears cropped or pillarboxed when displayed full-screen on a 4.7" iPhone. Make sure that important visual content remains in view on both display sizes. Emphasis mine. EDIT: Also here [1]: > Adhere to the safe area and layout margins defined by UIKit. These layout guides ensure appropriate insetting based on the device and context. The safe area also prevents content from underlapping the status bar, navigation bar, toolbar, and tab bar. Standard system-provided views automatically adopt a safe area layout guide. The diagram shown suggests a "safe area" even inset a little from the notch. [1] https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/visual-design/adaptivity-and-layout/ https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/v...
    - lxmcneill 9y ago
      I think they got their aspect ratio statement backwards. Surely 16:9 (iPhone 7) content appears pillarboxed on the 19.5:9 screen (iPhone X) and iPhone X content appears letterboxed on the iPhone 7?
  - geoelectric 9y ago
    Same guidelines also specify the safe area to put actual content, which excludes that area. In addition they suggest not hiding the status bar, which generally would push your content below it anyway. > Inset essential content to prevent clipping. In general, content should be centered and symmetrically inset so it looks great in any orientation and isn't clipped by corners or the device's sensor housing, or obscured by the indicator for accessing the Home screen ...and... > If your app currently hides the status bar, reconsider that decision on iPhone X. The display height on iPhone provides more vertical space for content than the displays of 4.7" iPhones, and the status bar occupies an area of the screen your app probably won't fully utilize. [emphases mine] My take is they don't want you putting a black background up there to mask it (unless all of your background is black, presumably) but you don't have to lay out around it either. For videos and photos in particular, since black is the normal background for outside the image I doubt there'll be an issue using it at the ends.
mesozoic 9y ago
Probably that's marketing I would expect game developers to rationally use the unobscured portion
- mypalmike 9y ago
  But they will use the obscured portion irrationally.
lathiat 9y ago
I had a similar though about video playback shown. Given it's OLED it seems like leaving it black should work OK in landscape
- lathiat 9y ago
  Here we go... "Placing black bars makes your app feel cramped" Screenshot from Apple design video: https://twitter.com/SteveMoser/status/907686208154816515 https://twitter.com/SteveMoser/status/907686208154816515
  - zaroth 9y ago
    It's good the screen extends around the sensors. People will figure out better way to use it, or you might say, work around it.
  - WA 9y ago
    Same feeling I get when websites have sticky headers – just like the one on apple.com
  - dweekly 9y ago
    Yep, Apple doesn't want devs to blackbar it. https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/iphone-x/ https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o... "Don't mask or call special attention to key display features. Don't attempt to hide the device's rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don't use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas either."
    - sampl 9y ago
      "Don't hide it because there's nothing wrong with it... but don't draw any extra attention to it either." It's like the way people talk about moles or scars.
joselreyes 9y ago
Any reasonable developer will likely just use the safe area (which excludes the notch) to display video, photos or games.
- btown 9y ago
  Is Apple a reasonable developer for the built-in media apps and Safari full screen video?
  - haikuginger 9y ago
    The aspect ratio of the screen is wider than 16:9, so full-screen 16:9 video will be boxed in on the other dimension first.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Apple specifically says not to do this in their updated Human Interface Guidelines.
  - boondaburrah 9y ago
    Just when I thought we had finally kissed "Title-Safe Area" goodbye...
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    If you use Safari to view a web page in landscape mode, is the majority of the left edge of the page just chopped off? Or did they make an exception for that, since most webpages are not specially designed for each and every device that Apple makes? This is a weird UI problem and I'm looking forward to seeing how Apple addresses it in each of the built-in apps.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      No, the text stays in the center portion only. The guidelines say that content covers the screen in landscape unless it’s text, in which case it’s inset.
walru 9y ago
Which begs the question: Would Jobs have delivered this? note: I personally say no. The form factor is, with all it's curves, a failure for creating UI/UX that feels complete. It's going to force more people to go Android first with their software development. When Android starts getting newer and better software more frequently the sea change will continue to widen and even long lasting fans will want to try something else.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  It only begs the question because you decided to bring it up.
- qq66 9y ago
  Probably not, but trying to run the company by the philosophy of "Would Jobs have done this" is impossible, since if emulating Steve Jobs' brain was possible, he wouldn't have been a unique talent.
  - amigoingtodie 9y ago
    Eh. The ethos died, too. The protruding camera on the back of recent models would be considered unacceptable.
- itsdrewmiller 9y ago
  People go iOS first because iOS has a much better market for paid apps - if Objective C wasn't enough to discourage this approach, I doubt a notch in the UI will be.
- sneak 9y ago
  https://begthequestion.info https://begthequestion.info
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    On what authority does the author of this site tell me what things mean in my own native language?
Osmium 9y ago
> I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs. Me too. Still, it'll be nice if there's an option to disable the notch and just use a slightly shorter display. There are no doubt Apple engineers out there who want this, so I hope it's a hidden accessibility setting :)
reaperducer 9y ago
Maybe that's where you're supposed to put your thumb. I already find watching video on a phone annoying because my fingers get in the way. I'd think it would be worse on this device.
jclardy 9y ago
I agree, when they first demoed it I was pretty shocked. For games, I can kind of understand, they can likely work around it...but for video? No videos are recorded with the thought of the left side of the screen being cut off.
- ovao 9y ago
  Not necessarily true. There's still quite large amount of video (or film) content adapted from wider aspect ratios that has been thoughtfully framed with the expectation that it will eventually be squeezed into a consumer device-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio. I don't expect the area encompassed by the notch to be meaningful to a lot of video content (possibly most). I think there are scenarios where it would be a minor problem, though.
- cbhl 9y ago
  Pretty much all professionally recorded content pays attention to safe zones, and has done so since the CRT days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) Phones historically have been weird for not cutting off part of the image that CRTs and even flat screen TVs have been known to do.
  - boondaburrah 9y ago
    Annoyingly, my TV won't let you turn it /off/. Not only that, but it won't accept it's own panel's native resolution of 1366x768, only 1280x720 which it then scales up to crop off a bunch of pixels. It's like they were dedicated to making a 720p television look like blurry bigfoot butt.
    - romwell 9y ago
      I was pissed off at my projector doing that (same problem with a different native resolution), but then it was a $90 projector. Sorry for your TV.
    - mortenjorck 9y ago
      And this is the true irony of the persistence of title-safe areas: Broadcast switched over to digital nearly a decade ago, analog set-top boxes haven't been produced in large quantities in years, and thus the concept of overscan should be completely dead by now. Yet TV manufacturers, for some reason I cannot wrap my mind around, continue to implement it, often by default (or in the extreme case, as you mention, with no way to disable it). And so title-safe areas continue to be an issue long after the obsolescence of the technology they were invented to work within.
twiceaday 9y ago
This phone has a 19.5:9 screen so 16:9 videos will have vertical black bars on either side that are thick enough to envelop the notch. You can see that in this [1] hands-on video. [1] https://youtu.be/OzTLlolkXxU?t=4m22s https://youtu.be/OzTLlolkXxU?t=4m22s
- Yizahi 9y ago
  Let me guess - it uses 19.5:9 because 18.5:9 and 18:9 were taken already and Apple can't really use a "used" concept? :)
  - bichiliad 9y ago
    I'd imagine they used that ratio because it allows (fairly standard) 16:9 videos to be displayed without the notch eating into them.
    - paulryanrogers 9y ago
      Said another way, why didn't they adjust the notch or other dimensions to support the nearest wider standard like 18.5:9?
      - oceanswave 9y ago
        These go to 19.5:9
      - qq66 9y ago
        Is 18.5:9 really a standard? And does it matter? They will sell a hundred million of these things and it will this become a standard size.
odammit 9y ago
When I saw them rotate and play the video I exclaimed "what in the unholy f_ck" and an entire Starbucks looked at me like I am the crazy one. Thats one of the most awkward things Ive seen on an tech gadget that wasn't made by Doc Johnson.
- nannal 9y ago
  you're shouting "what the holy fuck" in a starbucks becauseIOS didn't black out the screen near the notch. You earned those looks.
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    I assume they were kidding.
  - zaroth 9y ago
    To be fair, "what the unholy fuck."
    - arkitaip 9y ago
      Well I guess that's a matter of theology.
  - odammit 9y ago
    Not so much that they didn't black it out, that the notch was a notch in the first place. I get having a screen to the edge of the phone is "cool" there is a half inch of black on the top of the iPhone 7, cutting it down to a 1/4 of an inch or whatever it is on the X and not going to the edge would have been perfectly sane... right?! Edit: It wasn't a shout, so much as a dumbfounded exclamation. In retrospect, I should have table flipped and yelled "Im switching to a Nokia!"
    - chuckdries 9y ago
      I'd like the notch more if it were less than half the width of the screen
Reason077 9y ago
The notch doesn't bother me that much. If anything, it adds character in a world where phone designs are getting more generic and less distinguishable. The lack of a headphone jack (and no valid replacement, such as USB-C) gets me way more annoyed!
- ignu 9y ago
  Wireless headphones are the future. Weird annoying notches in your screen better not be the future.
  - tarboreus 9y ago
    You don't get to decide the future! Apple gets to decide the future. Notches and dongles for you.
    - tomelders 9y ago
      Well, yeah. They're the ones putting in the graft. So it makes sense they're the ones who get to decide the future.
  - pera 9y ago
    Wireless earbuds are yet another thing you have to remember to charge every night, easier to lose or break, expensive, and nonstandard. What's the point?
    - ksk 9y ago
      In the abstract, not having wires is clearly better in almost all situations - the only catch being, it doesn't take away features that wired tech have (lower latency, higher reliability/bandwidth, etc). Hopefully Apple's decision will spur some innovation in wireless charging/battery tech for headphones. Sometimes even if the decision is dumb, given the existing state of tech, it forces the industry to change, because of the market pressure that Apple exerts.
      - 9y ago
kllrnohj 9y ago
For all the things Essential Phone didn't do well, it actually did do this part correctly and letterboxed videos & games to avoid the camera cutting into the content.
gumby 9y ago
> What I cannot understand at all is the compromise in landscape mode, for games and video. I find that an odd glass-half-empty view. Since the screen has more pixels than earlier phones, instead of worrying about some being "taken away" by the notch, consider it as Apple adding some space for status info and the like to dead space that was previously bezel.
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  > instead of worrying about some being "taken away" by the notch, consider it as Apple adding some space for status info and the like to dead space that was previously bezel. But my bezel didn't literally cover parts of videos or fullscreen app UIs. I don't really get your point. Sure, overall you get more pixels but the screen still gets covered partially and you're not allowed to fill in the left and right of it with a black bar to make your content look not overlapped.
  - gumby 9y ago
    > I don't really get your point. Sure, overall you get more pixels but the screen still gets covered partially and you're not allowed to fill in the left and right of it with a black bar to make your content look not overlapped. Plenty of content will use a black bar, especially 16:9 video. For non-video content you could put info there that previously would have covered other content. (Plus I think the non-pixel notch area would be a perfect place for Safari to banish those stupid floating "share" buttons). Instead of getting hung up on the camera zone and what it "takes away", think of the phone as having a large rectangular screen plus a pair of small rectangular additional screens, like ears. Even if those little regions were always black you'd still have more pixels than Apple's previous phones.
    - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
      > Plenty of content will use a black bar, especially 16:9 video. Huh? I'm not sure I follow. By default video playback does not unless you manually resize it. Apple's updated language means you can't explicitly do this to cover those gaps with a black bar, either. It's not exactly the best user experience if I have to manually resize videos smaller to fit the screen properly. > Even if those little regions were always black you'd still have more pixels than Apple's previous phones. That would be great but Apple does not approve of that as per their updated language in their ToS for developers. You can't just fill it in with black bars (otherwise I would agree with you though I would argue Apple should have ways to automatically handle that).
achairapart 9y ago
The problem is not the notch but the rounded corners. I think they wanted to show how "cool" is the whole edge-to-edge screen with all the four rounded borders. If you black out the notch and keep that side square, then you must do the same on the other side and the screen will just look like the old rectangular display. While I'm sure there will be some option to do this, at least for video, for me, a square shaped phone would have made sense.
liberte82 9y ago
Oh man that notch bothers me. I suppose maybe I'll get used to it, but is making such a drastic design decision really worth the extra few millimetres of pixels on each side of it? It just bothers me aesthetically looking at images of it.
sogen 9y ago
Laziness
geodel 9y ago
Well I think the notch at top of iPhone X is to make it a top notch phone.
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  Collect your last cheque from the front desk and get out
- danielharrison 9y ago
  *sighs, looks down, shakes head
  - iaskwhy 9y ago
    iPhone X fails to unlock and asks for PIN?
- npgatech 9y ago
  Thanks for the laugh. That said, I am concerned that HN is becoming more and more like reddit. No offense, but the reason I come to HN is for serious informative discussion, not puns and jokes. I realize this is an asshole thing to say but I just had to let this out.
  - geodel 9y ago
    Aah I agree. I do resist most of the time. But this 'HN is becoming Reddit' is itself a cliche repeated here far more often than I like. A direct "Please no joke' would be just fine.
pen2l 9y ago
Did anyone else notice the false/misleading images in their promotional media? https://images.apple.com/media/us/iphone-x/2017/01df5b43-28e4-4848-bf20-490c34a926a7/overview/primary/design_corners/large.mp4 https://images.apple.com/media/us/iphone-x/2017/01df5b43-28e... There is no camera bulge there... they just deleted it. This is not something I expect from Apple.
- matt4077 9y ago
  The camera is on the far (under)side of the phone, which isn't even shown in this clip.
  - intoverflow2 9y ago
    From the shot it looks like it's a complete side view so should be visible. In reality it's probably that the camera is positioned just right so that it's obscured. They did the same thing when they made the iMacs skinny, just show them at the exact angle to hide the giant butt on them and make them look razor thin.
- stouset 9y ago
  I think we can chalk up this sort of thing happening once in, what, a decade(?) to an honest mistake.
  - pen2l 9y ago
    No! It turns out this is something they have a history of doing! https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6209759/apple-has-an-embarassing-bulge https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6209759/apple-has-an-emba... In the exact same way! I'm very surprised, I did not think Apple of all companies would deliberately do such a thing.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I hope other manufacturers pick up on this and just make their devices thick enough overall to match the camera bulge, with a huge bonus in battery capacity.
flipgimble 9y ago
This is something that can be largely fixed by the software, but it requires 3rd part developer coordination, that honestly only Apple can pull off. In iOS11 there is a concept of a safe area that UI should respect. With constraint based layout you can have a single layout that moved critical UI components outside of the notch area if its present. The problem is that the AR game was most likely built with Unity, which has its own 4-5 different UI systems, and my guess none of them are aware of a safe area. The problem is fixable, but why did Apple allow demo that was not polished enough to work well with their flagship phone?

jmull 9y ago

I think it's good to leave that up to the app developer. They can choose to use the space around the notch or crop it.

dperfect 9y ago
It's not as significant as the notch, but the corners of the display area are also rounded off, so the screen has some fairly interesting effective geometry in terms of viewable pixels. I wonder if the graphics and UI SDKs will have built-in functions to determine where these boundaries are (as they're likely to change in future models), or if developers will just be expected to work around them as best they can.
- ricketycricket 9y ago
  New metrics covered at https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/fall2017/801/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/fall2017/801/
dlubarov 9y ago
I imagine most developers won't want to design a tweaked layout specifically for the iPhone X. As a compromise, developers will probably just avoid putting important UI elements near the horizontal edges, similar to what console developers used to do to accommodate older TVs [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television)
dweekly 9y ago
Apple is asking devs not to crop it. "Don't mask or call special attention to key display features. Don't attempt to hide the device's rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don't use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas either." https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/iphone-x/ https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o...
- moduspol 9y ago
  That's one interpretation. Cropping video content doesn't necessarily fall into that, yet I can see how some other designs would and why they would want developers to avoid that. Besides, there's also: > Be mindful of aspect ratio differences when reusing existing artwork. iPhone X has a different aspect ratio than 4.7" iPhones. As a result, full-screen 4.7" iPhone artwork appears cropped or letterboxed when displayed full-screen on iPhone X. Likewise, full-screen iPhone X artwork appears cropped or pillarboxed when displayed full-screen on a 4.7" iPhone. Make sure that important visual content remains in view on both display sizes. Emphasis mine. EDIT: Also here [1]: > Adhere to the safe area and layout margins defined by UIKit. These layout guides ensure appropriate insetting based on the device and context. The safe area also prevents content from underlapping the status bar, navigation bar, toolbar, and tab bar. Standard system-provided views automatically adopt a safe area layout guide. The diagram shown suggests a "safe area" even inset a little from the notch. [1] https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/visual-design/adaptivity-and-layout/ https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/v...
  - lxmcneill 9y ago
    I think they got their aspect ratio statement backwards. Surely 16:9 (iPhone 7) content appears pillarboxed on the 19.5:9 screen (iPhone X) and iPhone X content appears letterboxed on the iPhone 7?
- geoelectric 9y ago
  Same guidelines also specify the safe area to put actual content, which excludes that area. In addition they suggest not hiding the status bar, which generally would push your content below it anyway. > Inset essential content to prevent clipping. In general, content should be centered and symmetrically inset so it looks great in any orientation and isn't clipped by corners or the device's sensor housing, or obscured by the indicator for accessing the Home screen ...and... > If your app currently hides the status bar, reconsider that decision on iPhone X. The display height on iPhone provides more vertical space for content than the displays of 4.7" iPhones, and the status bar occupies an area of the screen your app probably won't fully utilize. [emphases mine] My take is they don't want you putting a black background up there to mask it (unless all of your background is black, presumably) but you don't have to lay out around it either. For videos and photos in particular, since black is the normal background for outside the image I doubt there'll be an issue using it at the ends.

mesozoic 9y ago

Probably that's marketing I would expect game developers to rationally use the unobscured portion

mypalmike 9y ago
But they will use the obscured portion irrationally.

lathiat 9y ago

I had a similar though about video playback shown. Given it's OLED it seems like leaving it black should work OK in landscape

lathiat 9y ago
Here we go... "Placing black bars makes your app feel cramped" Screenshot from Apple design video: https://twitter.com/SteveMoser/status/907686208154816515 https://twitter.com/SteveMoser/status/907686208154816515
- zaroth 9y ago
  It's good the screen extends around the sensors. People will figure out better way to use it, or you might say, work around it.
- WA 9y ago
  Same feeling I get when websites have sticky headers – just like the one on apple.com
- dweekly 9y ago
  Yep, Apple doesn't want devs to blackbar it. https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/iphone-x/ https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/o... "Don't mask or call special attention to key display features. Don't attempt to hide the device's rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Don't use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas either."
  - sampl 9y ago
    "Don't hide it because there's nothing wrong with it... but don't draw any extra attention to it either." It's like the way people talk about moles or scars.

joselreyes 9y ago

Any reasonable developer will likely just use the safe area (which excludes the notch) to display video, photos or games.

btown 9y ago
Is Apple a reasonable developer for the built-in media apps and Safari full screen video?
- haikuginger 9y ago
  The aspect ratio of the screen is wider than 16:9, so full-screen 16:9 video will be boxed in on the other dimension first.
saagarjha 9y ago
Apple specifically says not to do this in their updated Human Interface Guidelines.
- boondaburrah 9y ago
  Just when I thought we had finally kissed "Title-Safe Area" goodbye...
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  If you use Safari to view a web page in landscape mode, is the majority of the left edge of the page just chopped off? Or did they make an exception for that, since most webpages are not specially designed for each and every device that Apple makes? This is a weird UI problem and I'm looking forward to seeing how Apple addresses it in each of the built-in apps.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    No, the text stays in the center portion only. The guidelines say that content covers the screen in landscape unless it’s text, in which case it’s inset.

walru 9y ago

Which begs the question: Would Jobs have delivered this? note: I personally say no. The form factor is, with all it's curves, a failure for creating UI/UX that feels complete. It's going to force more people to go Android first with their software development. When Android starts getting newer and better software more frequently the sea change will continue to widen and even long lasting fans will want to try something else.

saagarjha 9y ago
It only begs the question because you decided to bring it up.
qq66 9y ago
Probably not, but trying to run the company by the philosophy of "Would Jobs have done this" is impossible, since if emulating Steve Jobs' brain was possible, he wouldn't have been a unique talent.
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  Eh. The ethos died, too. The protruding camera on the back of recent models would be considered unacceptable.
itsdrewmiller 9y ago
People go iOS first because iOS has a much better market for paid apps - if Objective C wasn't enough to discourage this approach, I doubt a notch in the UI will be.
sneak 9y ago
https://begthequestion.info https://begthequestion.info
- umanwizard 9y ago
  On what authority does the author of this site tell me what things mean in my own native language?

Osmium 9y ago

> I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs. Me too. Still, it'll be nice if there's an option to disable the notch and just use a slightly shorter display. There are no doubt Apple engineers out there who want this, so I hope it's a hidden accessibility setting :)

reaperducer 9y ago

Maybe that's where you're supposed to put your thumb. I already find watching video on a phone annoying because my fingers get in the way. I'd think it would be worse on this device.

jclardy 9y ago

I agree, when they first demoed it I was pretty shocked. For games, I can kind of understand, they can likely work around it...but for video? No videos are recorded with the thought of the left side of the screen being cut off.

ovao 9y ago
Not necessarily true. There's still quite large amount of video (or film) content adapted from wider aspect ratios that has been thoughtfully framed with the expectation that it will eventually be squeezed into a consumer device-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio. I don't expect the area encompassed by the notch to be meaningful to a lot of video content (possibly most). I think there are scenarios where it would be a minor problem, though.
cbhl 9y ago
Pretty much all professionally recorded content pays attention to safe zones, and has done so since the CRT days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) Phones historically have been weird for not cutting off part of the image that CRTs and even flat screen TVs have been known to do.
- boondaburrah 9y ago
  Annoyingly, my TV won't let you turn it /off/. Not only that, but it won't accept it's own panel's native resolution of 1366x768, only 1280x720 which it then scales up to crop off a bunch of pixels. It's like they were dedicated to making a 720p television look like blurry bigfoot butt.
  - romwell 9y ago
    I was pissed off at my projector doing that (same problem with a different native resolution), but then it was a $90 projector. Sorry for your TV.
  - mortenjorck 9y ago
    And this is the true irony of the persistence of title-safe areas: Broadcast switched over to digital nearly a decade ago, analog set-top boxes haven't been produced in large quantities in years, and thus the concept of overscan should be completely dead by now. Yet TV manufacturers, for some reason I cannot wrap my mind around, continue to implement it, often by default (or in the extreme case, as you mention, with no way to disable it). And so title-safe areas continue to be an issue long after the obsolescence of the technology they were invented to work within.

twiceaday 9y ago

This phone has a 19.5:9 screen so 16:9 videos will have vertical black bars on either side that are thick enough to envelop the notch. You can see that in this [1] hands-on video. [1] https://youtu.be/OzTLlolkXxU?t=4m22s https://youtu.be/OzTLlolkXxU?t=4m22s

Yizahi 9y ago
Let me guess - it uses 19.5:9 because 18.5:9 and 18:9 were taken already and Apple can't really use a "used" concept? :)
- bichiliad 9y ago
  I'd imagine they used that ratio because it allows (fairly standard) 16:9 videos to be displayed without the notch eating into them.
  - paulryanrogers 9y ago
    Said another way, why didn't they adjust the notch or other dimensions to support the nearest wider standard like 18.5:9?
    - oceanswave 9y ago
      These go to 19.5:9
    - qq66 9y ago
      Is 18.5:9 really a standard? And does it matter? They will sell a hundred million of these things and it will this become a standard size.

odammit 9y ago

When I saw them rotate and play the video I exclaimed "what in the unholy f_ck" and an entire Starbucks looked at me like I am the crazy one. Thats one of the most awkward things Ive seen on an tech gadget that wasn't made by Doc Johnson.

nannal 9y ago
you're shouting "what the holy fuck" in a starbucks becauseIOS didn't black out the screen near the notch. You earned those looks.
- Gaelan 9y ago
  I assume they were kidding.
- zaroth 9y ago
  To be fair, "what the unholy fuck."
  - arkitaip 9y ago
    Well I guess that's a matter of theology.
- odammit 9y ago
  Not so much that they didn't black it out, that the notch was a notch in the first place. I get having a screen to the edge of the phone is "cool" there is a half inch of black on the top of the iPhone 7, cutting it down to a 1/4 of an inch or whatever it is on the X and not going to the edge would have been perfectly sane... right?! Edit: It wasn't a shout, so much as a dumbfounded exclamation. In retrospect, I should have table flipped and yelled "Im switching to a Nokia!"
  - chuckdries 9y ago
    I'd like the notch more if it were less than half the width of the screen

Reason077 9y ago

The notch doesn't bother me that much. If anything, it adds character in a world where phone designs are getting more generic and less distinguishable. The lack of a headphone jack (and no valid replacement, such as USB-C) gets me way more annoyed!

ignu 9y ago
Wireless headphones are the future. Weird annoying notches in your screen better not be the future.
- tarboreus 9y ago
  You don't get to decide the future! Apple gets to decide the future. Notches and dongles for you.
  - tomelders 9y ago
    Well, yeah. They're the ones putting in the graft. So it makes sense they're the ones who get to decide the future.
- pera 9y ago
  Wireless earbuds are yet another thing you have to remember to charge every night, easier to lose or break, expensive, and nonstandard. What's the point?
  - ksk 9y ago
    In the abstract, not having wires is clearly better in almost all situations - the only catch being, it doesn't take away features that wired tech have (lower latency, higher reliability/bandwidth, etc). Hopefully Apple's decision will spur some innovation in wireless charging/battery tech for headphones. Sometimes even if the decision is dumb, given the existing state of tech, it forces the industry to change, because of the market pressure that Apple exerts.
    - 9y ago

kllrnohj 9y ago

For all the things Essential Phone didn't do well, it actually did do this part correctly and letterboxed videos & games to avoid the camera cutting into the content.

gumby 9y ago

> What I cannot understand at all is the compromise in landscape mode, for games and video. I find that an odd glass-half-empty view. Since the screen has more pixels than earlier phones, instead of worrying about some being "taken away" by the notch, consider it as Apple adding some space for status info and the like to dead space that was previously bezel.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> instead of worrying about some being "taken away" by the notch, consider it as Apple adding some space for status info and the like to dead space that was previously bezel. But my bezel didn't literally cover parts of videos or fullscreen app UIs. I don't really get your point. Sure, overall you get more pixels but the screen still gets covered partially and you're not allowed to fill in the left and right of it with a black bar to make your content look not overlapped.
- gumby 9y ago
  > I don't really get your point. Sure, overall you get more pixels but the screen still gets covered partially and you're not allowed to fill in the left and right of it with a black bar to make your content look not overlapped. Plenty of content will use a black bar, especially 16:9 video. For non-video content you could put info there that previously would have covered other content. (Plus I think the non-pixel notch area would be a perfect place for Safari to banish those stupid floating "share" buttons). Instead of getting hung up on the camera zone and what it "takes away", think of the phone as having a large rectangular screen plus a pair of small rectangular additional screens, like ears. Even if those little regions were always black you'd still have more pixels than Apple's previous phones.
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    > Plenty of content will use a black bar, especially 16:9 video. Huh? I'm not sure I follow. By default video playback does not unless you manually resize it. Apple's updated language means you can't explicitly do this to cover those gaps with a black bar, either. It's not exactly the best user experience if I have to manually resize videos smaller to fit the screen properly. > Even if those little regions were always black you'd still have more pixels than Apple's previous phones. That would be great but Apple does not approve of that as per their updated language in their ToS for developers. You can't just fill it in with black bars (otherwise I would agree with you though I would argue Apple should have ways to automatically handle that).

achairapart 9y ago

The problem is not the notch but the rounded corners. I think they wanted to show how "cool" is the whole edge-to-edge screen with all the four rounded borders. If you black out the notch and keep that side square, then you must do the same on the other side and the screen will just look like the old rectangular display. While I'm sure there will be some option to do this, at least for video, for me, a square shaped phone would have made sense.

liberte82 9y ago

Oh man that notch bothers me. I suppose maybe I'll get used to it, but is making such a drastic design decision really worth the extra few millimetres of pixels on each side of it? It just bothers me aesthetically looking at images of it.

sogen 9y ago

Laziness

geodel 9y ago

Well I think the notch at top of iPhone X is to make it a top notch phone.

King-Aaron 9y ago
Collect your last cheque from the front desk and get out
danielharrison 9y ago
*sighs, looks down, shakes head
- iaskwhy 9y ago
  iPhone X fails to unlock and asks for PIN?
npgatech 9y ago
Thanks for the laugh. That said, I am concerned that HN is becoming more and more like reddit. No offense, but the reason I come to HN is for serious informative discussion, not puns and jokes. I realize this is an asshole thing to say but I just had to let this out.
- geodel 9y ago
  Aah I agree. I do resist most of the time. But this 'HN is becoming Reddit' is itself a cliche repeated here far more often than I like. A direct "Please no joke' would be just fine.

pen2l 9y ago

Did anyone else notice the false/misleading images in their promotional media? https://images.apple.com/media/us/iphone-x/2017/01df5b43-28e4-4848-bf20-490c34a926a7/overview/primary/design_corners/large.mp4 https://images.apple.com/media/us/iphone-x/2017/01df5b43-28e... There is no camera bulge there... they just deleted it. This is not something I expect from Apple.

matt4077 9y ago
The camera is on the far (under)side of the phone, which isn't even shown in this clip.
- intoverflow2 9y ago
  From the shot it looks like it's a complete side view so should be visible. In reality it's probably that the camera is positioned just right so that it's obscured. They did the same thing when they made the iMacs skinny, just show them at the exact angle to hide the giant butt on them and make them look razor thin.
stouset 9y ago
I think we can chalk up this sort of thing happening once in, what, a decade(?) to an honest mistake.
- pen2l 9y ago
  No! It turns out this is something they have a history of doing! https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6209759/apple-has-an-embarassing-bulge https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6209759/apple-has-an-emba... In the exact same way! I'm very surprised, I did not think Apple of all companies would deliberately do such a thing.
microcolonel 9y ago
I hope other manufacturers pick up on this and just make their devices thick enough overall to match the camera bulge, with a huge bonus in battery capacity.

flipgimble 9y ago

This is something that can be largely fixed by the software, but it requires 3rd part developer coordination, that honestly only Apple can pull off. In iOS11 there is a concept of a safe area that UI should respect. With constraint based layout you can have a single layout that moved critical UI components outside of the notch area if its present. The problem is that the AR game was most likely built with Unity, which has its own 4-5 different UI systems, and my guess none of them are aware of a safe area. The problem is fixable, but why did Apple allow demo that was not polished enough to work well with their flagship phone?