Yesterday, Huawei unveiled its latest flagship phones for Europe: the P20 and P20 Pro. And like almost every other flagship phone that has been announced since the iPhone X was released last year, the P20 and P20 Pro also feature a notch display design. 

If you are a notch hater, that’s not a particularly good news. But then, with every other OEM adopting the notch display design on their smartphones, I guess its time to embrace the notch. Huawei, however, has a unique solution for this problem: it will allow P20 owners to hide the notch. Yes, you read that right.

An option in Emotion UI 8.1 on the P20 and P20 Pro will allow users to hide the notch. When enabled, the UI on the handsets will adjust to mask the notch and the notification bar will be shown below it. This should work very well on the P20 Pro since it comes with an OLED display panel. The P20’s LCD panel might not be that effective in masking the notch due to light bleeding and the inherent tech of LCD displays that put them at a disadvantage when displaying black compared to OLEDs.

https://twitter.com/WhatTheBit/status/978632516927217665

Nonetheless, this is a unique approach from Huawei that should definitely please people who hate notch display phones. This approach should also work very well on the P20 since it comes with a bottom chin which would then give the phone a symmetrical look when the notch is hidden.

Our Take

Apart from Samsung and Huawei, every other major smartphone OEM has embraced the notch display design with their phones. So, there’s really no point in hating the notch anymore and its time you start embracing it. When done right, the notch can be used to expand the total viewing area for content which is always a welcome addition.