As smartphone displays get bigger, the notch is often needed to house the earpiece speaker and front facing cameras. Unfortunately, not everybody likes it. After the release of the iPhone X, almost every single Android smartphone maker has adopted the notch including ASUS with its ZenFone 5.
Fortunately, we are seeing more manufacturers trying to shrink the notch or have it removed altogether with a sliding mechanism. With 2019 just around the corner, it appears that ASUS is working on a different solution to tackle the notch issue and it looks pretty weird.
According to an Italian IT blog, the device you’re seeing here is apparently the new ZenFone 6. It also gets an edge to edge display but it comes with a tiny notch that’s placed off centre. It’s located just right between the battery percentage icon and signal bars. This leaves the rest of the top display unobstructed for notifications.
It also uses a thin speaker grill that’s placed right at the top edge of the device. Despite the effort of minimising the bezels at the top, the ZenFone 6 shown here still comes with a rather thick chin.
The back of the ZenFone 6 appears to come with a 3D glass back design which curves around the edges. There are no details on the internals just yet but you can probably expect high spec hardware at affordable prices just like the current ZenFone 5/5z series.
If you look at the bottom, it uses a USB-C port and it still retains a 3.5mm headphone jack. A physical fingerprint sensor isn’t visible on the glass back. However, it could be hidden underneath the black panel below the main dual-cameras. Since the current ZenFone 5 series was announced during MWC 2018 in March, it is likely that ASUS will launch the upcoming ZenFone 6 in Barcelona at the same event next year.
What do you think of this off-centre notch design? Let us know in the comments below.
