OnePlus 6 Will Sport A Front Notch, Confirms Co-Founder Carl Pei

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei earlier this week confirmed that its upcoming OnePlus 6 smartphone will sport a notch on the front panel. While revealing additional information about the flagship’s design, he said that the front notch in the upcoming handset will pack a front camera, earpiece, ambient light sensor and LED notification light.

Now, CEO Pete Lau has detailed out the reason behind the adoption of the new design. While calling it the most practical solution available at the moment, Lau explained that the space occupied by the notch typically goes unused in standard use.

“Since our components no longer require the entire width of a top bezel, we focused our efforts on maximizing the amount of screen real estate,” Lau said in the post. “It’s easy to get caught up in a debate on aesthetics, but to us this decision was simply about pursuing optimal phone design,” he further added.

Lau further claimed that the central positioning of the front camera is important to ensure an accurate alignment, especially when it comes to capturing selfies and using the Face Unlock feature.

There have been several speculations of technology giants considering integrating a “pop-out” camera. However, the technology has not reached the practical stage as yet. Therefore, considering this alternative would potentially be ruled out even by OnePlus.

The company also claims that the new design will be optimized to offer better quality in terms of brightness levels, chromatic accuracy and colour range.

The Chinese technology giant earlier this year confirmed that their 2018 flagship smartphone would be launched in the second quarter this year, probably in the month of May or June. As can be recalled, Pete Lau had also revealed that the device would be carrying the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip.

You can read OnePlus' entire official statement on the matter here.