2018 was ruled by the notch. Some of them are better than others, but overall the notch hasn't been great. Some of them were too big, which is remarkably frustrating when we're supposed to be buying these phones, at least in part, for the great display. The small ones made it a little less frustrating, but the notch itself isn't a great design choice.

I have not been a fan of this at all since day one. Essential did it almost okay with their small notch, with the "teardrop" shape finding its way to other devices out there from other manufacturers. And then Apple came along with its wide-but-not-tall notch that basically set the smartphone world on fire.

2018 was the year of the notch, and 2019 appears to be the year of the hole punch.

Huawei, Samsung, and Honor have all introduced handsets with the small cutout in the display for the front-facing camera, and they certainly won't be the last. And leaks have showcased Motorola, Nokia, and others are working on the same thing. We've come to a point where, in the hope that we can reduce bezels to just about nothing, we've come to terms with designs that impede the display in some way or another.

I'm torn on this situation, because I want my display to not be all screwed up in some way or another. I'm a purist in this way, because even though I don't necessarily watch a lot of stuff on my phone, I still watch some things. And I definitely don't think a director of a movie or TV show, or the broadcasters of a hockey game, ever intended for a notch to exist, or a random hole in your screen.

But it probably shouldn't matter because I really only watch a quick video, or a movie trailer, here and there. I do watch full hockey games on my phone quite a bit (because I'm multitasking and my TV is usually busy with something else), but there's black bars on the left and right side of the content anyway so a hole in the screen probably wouldn't even matter.

But maybe the slider design is something that should take off. I know it's strange and it probably doesn't have a chance at all of becoming "the next big thing", but it would fix the problem (and it is a problem) of mangling our displays. Xiaomi has a pretty cool idea for how it would work, but considering we haven't seen the same level of adoption, or even interest, as the hole punch design it definitely feels like the sliding form factor won't catch on at all.

Where do you stand on this? Would you be okay with a slider design if it meant not having a hole, or other kind of indention in your screen? Or are you perfectly okay with the notch/hole punch design scheme? Let me know!