Last year’s iPhone X made quite a lot of noise for its notch, a design feature at the top portion of the screen that had since been adopted by other smartphone manufacturers. As seen in the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9, Samsung has chosen to be an outlier by not including the feature in its two most recent high-profile phone releases. Based on previous Galaxy S10 rumors, that might still be the case when Samsung’s next flagship phone arrives, but a new leak suggests that the South Korean tech titan will be taking things a bit further by including a new design feature that could become “mainstream” by next year.
On Thursday, prominent mobile device leaker IceUniverse took to Twitter to post a newly leaked photo purporting to showcase the Galaxy S10’s all-screen display in three side-by-side shots of the device. According to T3 , the image corroborates previous leaks hinting at an all-screen setup in the front, but stands out for the clear presence of what looks to be an open-hole camera in the upper middle, upper left, and upper right of the phone in each respective shot. With that in mind, KitGuru speculated that Samsung could be in the process of experimenting on different locations for the rumored camera hole.
“The display open hole camera technology will become the mainstream technology in 2019,” IceUniverse commented.
Samsung Galaxy S10 to feature notch-killing all-screen display https://t.co/QRQeLfocZh
— Mike (@MADSTANG68) October 20, 2018
Considering how Samsung chose not to include an iPhone X-like notch on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9, T3 speculated that the Galaxy S10 could lead the way as the first device of its kind to come with an open-hole camera. The publication also pointed out how Ice Universe has long been known for his “cryptic, but accurate” tweets that successfully predicted new features, specifications, or design elements for Samsung phones months before their actual launches.
Aside from the notch-free, all-screen display, and open-hole camera setup, the Samsung Galaxy S10 is also expected to come with a few other features that could help differentiate it from Apple’s iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. In August, a number of publications, including the Daily Mail , cited a patent filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization that suggested Samsung is working on self-healing technology that could protect the Galaxy S10’s screen from scratches, nicks, and fingerprint marks. The upcoming flagship has also been rumored for months to come with an in-display fingerprint sensor, with SamMobile noting in September that Qualcomm could end up as Samsung’s supplier for the state-of-the-art feature.
