You can see that screen notches are the latest trend with smartphones by just taking a look at the latest devices released by giants like Apple, Nokia, LG or Google. They and many others chose this feature in order to save space and improve the visual design with the screen notch. Perhaps if one works well, then two of them will do wonders.
At least this seems to be the approach taken by Sharp with its latest smartphone, the Aquos R2 Compact which comes with a notch at the top and another one at the bottom. Far from being a large phone like the iPhone XR or the Galaxy Note 9, the Aquos R2 Compact is still a high-end phone that comes in a small form design which would appeal to a limited audience in most markets.
However, Sharp plans to sell this phone in the Japanese market where peculiar phones seem to perform much better traditionally. For example, you can still find Android flip phones over there. The appeal of a dual notch phone could come from a design point of view as a way to balance out the natural asymmetry which can be caused by chopping off part of the display at the top.
However, the Aquos R2 Compact deals with that by having two different notch shapes. Sharp chose to equip the Aquos R2 Compact with a 5.2-inch 2280 x 1080 LCD. At the top, there’s a notch that surrounds the camera that faces the front. This is a U-shaped cutout similar to the Essential Phone. At the bottom, the second notch surrounds the top half of the phone’s fingerprint sensor. This is a wide cutout like the iPhone, but it’s smaller than that.
Juana loves to cover the tech and gaming industry, she always stays on the first row of CES conference and reports live from there.
