A Closer Look at Honor’s Hole-punch Screen Technology

Recently, we had a discussion about display holes, slider phones, and notches. The community has a lot say about this topic, so in this article we will delve a bit deeper into the technology behind the “hole-punch” style notch in the upcoming Honor View20 and Samsung Galaxy A8s.

Phones with Hole-punch Displays

The hole-punch display is going to be the trending feature of 2019 and we are already seeing this pop up in a few different phones. The Huawei Nova 4, Samsung Galaxy A8s, Samsung Galaxy S10 and the Honor View20 all sport the hole-punch display. While all of these designs might seem the same, Honor is able to achieve a superior results using several different techniques.

The Galaxy A8s with hole-punch notch

The above picture is the Galaxy A8s showing the selfie camera poking through the display. You’ll also notice a decent sized black ring around the hole-punch. This ring is the result of the camera protruding through every layer of the display except for the very surface level. This leaves a large hole that what you’d find if the camera didn’t pass through the display layer of the screen.

Another downside of the camera punching through each layer of the display, is that light will have a greater chance of leaking through. This design could result in poor quality selfies. There’s also the problem of the display’s durability being compromised by the design. This could cause a display be be easily broken.

Honor View20 with hole-punch notch

The Honor View20 was able to achieve a small camera spot that does not fully penetrate the display, while still retaining unimpeded camera function. On the liquid-crystal layer, Honor View20 has adopted a special technique called pixel transition technology, which controls the flow of liquid crystals, enabling light to go through and reach the camera.

This makes for a hole with a smaller diameter. While the Galaxy A8s has an estimated 6.7mm diameter, the Honor View20 comes out to only 4.5mm. In the layers of the display that have holes in them, Honor gives up mechanical drilling and adopts the more difficult photolithography drilling to ensure the aperture is as small as possible.

There’s less of a chance that you’ll have any issues with light leakage and should produce better quality selfie shots. Durability should be much better with Honor’s hole-punch design as it has more layers of glass over the camera hole.

These phones feature the first hole-punch designs we are seeing in smartphones, so it will be interesting to see how this technology evolves over the next year. the Honor View20 is set to launch in China on December 26th with a global release on January 22nd.

Why a Hole-punch Display is Better than the Notch

The notch was one of the most criticized phone features of 2018. While some manufactures were able to minimize the intrusion with a water-drop design, it still acted as an eye-sore in your phone’s design. The hole-punch design that houses the selfie camera fits in with the design of the phone naturally. It’s much smaller, which means there’s much less intrusion into the display of your phone. The hole-punch designs allows for the phone to have a greater screen-to-body ratio, which is always a better viewing experience for the user.

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0The Technology Behind Honor’s Hole-punch

The Honor View20 has 18 layers that make up the display of the phone. Honor’s design can prevent display interference with the in-screen camera since the camera is perfectly embedded into the screen for an optimal display. Compared to other in-screen camera designs which drill through all layers of the screen, the Honor View20’s design maintains the structure and strength of the display, and ensures better usability and photo quality.

At the connection at the bottom of the screen, Honor View20 engineers tried dozens of materials, and finally found a special glue to complete the bonding to “lock” the light for camera under the screen in maximum level.

Visit the Honor View20 forums to see what others are saying about this upcoming phone 

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