engineering reasons for bezels?

[spinedoc77]

Just curious if some engineers or others would post up if there is some kind of engineering reason we need bezels? I understand that bezels give your fingers somewhere to grip on something larger like an ipad, that's a different debate IMO. But the iphone 5 is easily held in one hand, even a small female hand, and it's rare that my fingers touch the screen while holding it one handed.

Is there any technological need for a bezel? Could a phone be manufactured with a screen that went all the way from one edge to the other with no bezel at all? What might be cool would be having some kind of speaker and earpiece which conduced sound through the glass, taking away the need for a physical speaker/earpiece to have bezel space. I'm sure the home button would be even easier to solve.

Seems like Apple would solve 2 problems, it would have a much larger screen but keep a small phone. Seems like other phone makers are moving towards this.

 

[pickaxe]

Essentially, you can't have a screen without a bezel with current technologies, so there's always going to be SOME bezel. Of course, the manufacturer may choose to put more bezel than necessary (for example, most tablets).

Newer screen tech allows bezel size to shrink (for example, IGZO) and as we gradually move away from Silicon we'll start seeing some huge changes.

 

[lousada]

I'd guess no bezels would mean even more broken screens too.

 

[Bear]

I'd guess no bezels would mean even more broken screens too.

Why? We'd still have the plastic or metal cases.

 

[lousada]

Why? We'd still have the plastic or metal cases.

I'm talking out of my ass, but i'm guessing the bezels provide some protection to a side impact, which is the kind that breaks screens.

And some people don't really like to use cases.

 

[cynics]

I don't see a reason for as much as the iPhone has which is pretty low on bezel to screen ratio list compared to other manufacturers phones.

As far as drop protection? No. The front is nearly edge to edge glass anyway with the bezel under the glass. So there would be virtually no difference between it being glass covering a bezel or glass covering a screen.

I was pretty confident the iPhone 5 was going to be the size of the 4/4S with a 4" screen. I figured if the Razr M could do a 4.3" screen on a phone the size of the 5 then there is no reason Apple can't do it or even better.

 

[Vctr]

I think the bezel is really just there so there is more surface area for components to be placed under. For phones like the Galaxy S4 that have huge screens, bezels aren't necessary because the screen itself has so much surface area that they have enough room to place components.

 

[oneMadRssn]

The reason for a bezel is because there is more to a screen than just the visible part. Simply put, there are wires that come out of the top and/or sides of the screen that actually supply to the signal/power to each pixel, and these wires need access (they also cannot come out of the bottom of the screen, as they cannot run through the various optical/backlighting layers below the screen). Further, the area next to the screen is often used to make sure there is proper alignment of the multitude of layers that go into a display. Further again, backlight usually goes beyond the endges of the screen to create a more even light, it's never perfectly even right at the edge. Finally, there are tolerance issues of all this stuff fitting together that has to be accounted for.

Basically, you can have the glass to the very edge, but there will always have to be at least some bezel with any sort of LCD/LED based screen, even if it's only 1mm, or .1mm. Perhaps with OLED we can have a bezel-free screen.

 

[spinedoc77]

The reason for a bezel is because there is more to a screen than just the visible part. Simply put, there are wires that come out of the top and/or sides of the screen that actually supply to the signal/power to each pixel, and these wires need access (they also cannot come out of the bottom of the screen, as they cannot run through the various optical/backlighting layers below the screen). Further, the area next to the screen is often used to make sure there is proper alignment of the multitude of layers that go into a display. Further again, backlight usually goes beyond the endges of the screen to create a more even light, it's never perfectly even right at the edge. Finally, there are tolerance issues of all this stuff fitting together that has to be accounted for.

Basically, you can have the glass to the very edge, but there will always have to be at least some bezel with any sort of LCD/LED based screen, even if it's only 1mm, or .1mm. Perhaps with OLED we can have a bezel-free screen.

Nice explanation, TYVM.

 

[cynics]

Nice explanation, TYVM.

I think the next question is, why do iPhones have so much bezel?

Sure there are technical reasons, ear piece, home button, etc. But I don't think that's a good excuse anymore. When the S3 came out the iPhone 4S was the top of the line iPhone. Only the Droid 4 had worse screen to bezel ratio and it has a slide out keyboard. The 4S was under the Razr Maxx and that has a huge battery. It feels like the iPhone doesn't really have anything that special about it hardware wise that justifies such a large bezel.

 

[spinedoc77]

I think the next question is, why do iPhones have so much bezel?

Sure there are technical reasons, ear piece, home button, etc. But I don't think that's a good excuse anymore. When the S3 came out the iPhone 4S was the top of the line iPhone. Only the Droid 4 had worse screen to bezel ratio and it has a slide out keyboard. The 4S was under the Razr Maxx and that has a huge battery. It feels like the iPhone doesn't really have anything that special about it hardware wise that justifies such a large bezel.

Yep that's what got me thinking about all of this, sitting here looking at my ip5 and realizing that I'd probably be buying a phone with the same exact large bezels for $749 in a couple of weeks.