The notch has become one of the most polarizing design elements in the smartphone world in recent years, aside from the removal of the headphone jack, of course.
It's easy to see why: because there's not much room for creativity anymore — all modern phones basically look bezel-less, with a camera or two on the back, and no home button in sight — even the slightest change invites scrutiny. That's exactly what happened with the iPhone X's notch, although it wasn't the first to debut such a design.
Pushing out the bezels in favor of a much larger screen means that crucial components — front-facing sensors, selfie cameras, the earpiece — have to go somewhere. For now, the notch is the best, or at least workable solution. Vivo and Doogee each has an idea on how to get rid of it, but all they have are just concepts.
ZTE Puts Two Notches On Its Phone
Instead of getting rid of the notch, however, ZTE is embracing it. Not just embracing it too — duplicating it.
ZTE's concept phone is called Iceberg, and it was found on the IF World Design Guide by WinFuture. It has a notch on the top and bottom, leaving the rest of the front panel as an edge-to-edge display.
The upper notch has the selfie camera, the earpiece, and other sensors. The lower notch has a front-facing speaker, which effectively gives users a pair of front-facing stereo speakers, like on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL.
ZTE Iceberg Design
The weirdness doesn't stop there, though. The Iceberg's edges are significantly rounded similar to the iPhone X, but in all four corners, there's a small piece of glass that fills in the frame. Why ZTE chose this design remains uncertain, but it certainly makes the phone stand out from other models. The listing says it's also a nod to its Iceberg name:
"The ZTE Iceberg uses a seamless glass connection technique to combine two pieces of glass as one unibody, which makes the phone resemble a fragment of ice. The four corners of the phone are transparent to reveal the essential beauty of the glass material. The effect is beautiful and mysterious."
Mysterious? Yes. Beautiful? You decide.
Smart Connector
On the back are dual cameras, a fingerprint sensor, and what looks like a port for a smart connector, which seems to suggest that the ZTE Iceberg is supposed to work with detachable peripherals, similar to the way Moto Mods work.
The listing states a launch date of "after 2018," and ZTE clearly plans on evolving this beyond the concept stage, as suggested by "Consumer/User" being the target groups in the listing.
