Haven't we had enough with the notch design already, even though it's just the beginning of a new design trend. While most companies such as OPPO, Vivo, Huawei, Asus, and others are following in the footsteps of Apple's iPhone X design, another Chinese company is taking things a 'notch' higher, literally.
ZTE, one of the well-known smartphone makers around the world, has a concept for its next smartphone and it challenges the likes of all other smartphones with a notch. According to WinFuture, the smartphone is being called Iceberg and the name is apt.
Before we get to that, let's address the elephant in the room. The presence of two notches (that's right) on a smartphone is a bold step by ZTE despite the hostile treatment the notch design has been getting since it became popular last September.
The renders shared by iF DESIGN WORLD GUIDE show the ZTE Iceberg concept phone with a notch on the top as well as at the bottom of the display. This is clearly a first of its kind edge-to-edge display design we've seen, but on a brighter side, there's extra screen real estate for those who value that.
But if you think two notches are odd, wait till you see the full picture. As we mentioned earlier about the apt naming strategy behind ZTE Iceberg, the reason appears to be the raised edges of glass on each rounded corner of the phone to give a more angular design. It's absolutely unclear why ZTE would do something like that, but there is a port for a smart connector and we're guessing the icy corners are going to help with external mods.
According to Neowin, ZTE simply describes the use of glass in the corners as "a seamless glass connection technique to combine two pieces of glass as one unibody, which makes the phone resemble a fragment of ice. The four corners of the phone are transparent to reveal the essential beauty of the glass material."
Besides these two major design overhauls, the Iceberg smartphone shows dual cameras at the back, a fingerprint scanner, and it is said to support wireless charging.
However you feel about this new concept phone, don't expect it to hit the market anytime soon. ZTE Iceberg is said to be under development for 13-24 months and has a potential release date sometime "after 2018". The handset won't be widely available as well, as ZTE is looking at North America, Asia, and Europe as potential markets.
Stay tuned for more updates.
