If you follow smartphone news, you already know the next iPhone and Google Pixel (built by LG) will both have drastically slimmer bezels, with the former resembling something like the recently announced Essential Phone and the latter like a Samsung Galaxy S8.
I’ve been poking fun at large-bezeled phones (especially the 2016 iPhone and Pixel) for about a year now, but I’ll admit that was me being a snobby tech geek. I was well aware that the general public didn’t yet care much about large bezels at the time. But times are changing. We are almost at the time when slim or no bezels are expected for big name phones. In a couple more months, just about every flagship phone by every major company will go that route. We know LG’s V30 will shave a bit more off the forehead and chin from the already svelte G6; Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 will continue the S8’s design aesthetic; Huawei’s boss already confirmed the Mate 10 to be have an “edge-to-edge” screen; and Xiaomi is very likely going to release a follow-up to its pioneering bezel-less phone in coming weeks.
The new iPhone and Pixel then, will fit right in. But there are reliable rumors and leaks suggesting that both companies have "lower end" variants of those phones, without slim bezels.
Nothing has been officially confirmed, of course, but leaked photos of the other Pixel 2 and other new iPhone have been circulating the web.
So this begs the question: who are these for? The outdated-looking, big-bezeled Pixel 2 (this one not made by LG) has already been mocked all over the web by tech geeks (check this Twitter search result for "Pixel 2"+"bezels"), and I think the general public's reaction will be the same.
Unless Apple and Google plan on selling the weaker versions of their phones with the noticeably outdated hardware at drastically lower prices (to quote the Joker in The Dark Knight ... “uh...half”), I really wonder who’s going to buy the large chin iPhone/Pixel 2 that look like it’s stuck in spring 2016 when there are futuristic, almost all-screen versions of the same devices sitting next to it at the display counter.
Here's a prediction: most tech writers will conclude the iPhone 7s is "boring" and not worth the upgrade over the 7, and the LG-made slim-bezeled Pixel 2 will sell significantly more than it's chunkier smaller brother.
