The “notch” is bigger than the ears. The ears are too small to be really useful and are a design element which fools the brain into thinking that the “notch” is part of the display, thus making it look larger. The actual notch on the Essential phone is just a small cutout and hardly ever would interfere with the status display. You’ll notice Apple’s design notes requires developers to use the “ears” and not just black them out, because it would harm the illusion.
As for the home button fingerprint reader, it is larger than it really needs to be. Other manufacturers have put them on the back or the side where they don’t take up usable space.
I’d argue that it’s more usable on the front than the back. Particularly in the instance of making a payment. I place my thumb on the reader and can get visual feedback of the payment confirmation.
I’ll report back after i have paid with my first Android phone.
Olivetti. A company that, according to that article, wanted to make accounting fun by a colourful and slightly impractical calculator.
I liked the comparison with IKEA design much better that I read elsewhere: IKEA manages to offer no-nonsense, clean design as well as playful little quirks and colour. Combined in one, sometimes. They really and lastingly changed the game, while Olivetti played around and forgot several times that you actually need to use the stuff, not just look at it.
Ok, the last one was unfair. The typewriters were rad.
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Only if you’re in denial.
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On my Sony, which has the sensor on the side, I can remove it from pocket and operate it one handed while having an unobstructed view of the entire screen. Same with my LG which has the sensor on the back. I realise you can do that with a thumb on an iPhone, but it’s more difficult especially on the big ones if you have small hands. Most people I see doing it with an iPhone use two hands.
All of these things are personal preferences, but then Samsung managed a much smaller front sensor than did Apple, so my original observation stands.
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Interesting. Yeah like i said i am more than likely to go Android for my next phone (loving the look of the LG V30 & Pixel 2 XL) so will get a better idea of how the rear fingerprint sensor works. A side sensor sounds like a good idea too.
Either way ANY fingerprint reader sounds better than Face ID 
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I did have doubts about fingerprint sensor reliability, up until the point that I managed to abrade a fingerprint by careless use of some wet and dry, and although my fingerprint was still visible (it wasn’t that eroded) it wasn’t recognised for several weeks.
I really think Face ID is a placeholder, it seems an extremely complex and space intensive solution, Apple presumably having intended an under-screen sensor and then, when it didn’t come off, having nowhere to put a finger scanner.
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It’s been gradually shrunk on each model, and is gone completely in the X. I’m very okay with a combination thumbprint-reader and physical button, personally.
The plan originally was for the entire screen to work as the finger scanner – put your finger anywhere, it reads it, done. That ended up being too difficult to pull off in time, so plan B was to put it at the bottom but have it be a non-physical button. Also ended up being too difficult. FaceID was something they were working on anyway but decided to push for this release to really differentiate the X from competitors.
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At least on the Nexus 5x, rear-mounted fingerprint reader seems vastly more sensible than front-mounted. It sits pretty much where your fingers go when holding the phone to look at the screen, with a slightly raised ring around it so you know if you are resting a finger on it or not. When activated, the phone uses the vibrate function for a moment to make that obvious.
When you don’t want to activate it, quite easy to hold the phone naturally without a fingertip resting in that area; but with one available within a centimeter or so so you can activate with just a slight shift. Absolutely no reason why one would want to add wasted bezel space by moving it to the front(since the ‘home’ button isn’t a thing in Android. If it were, putting the reader on that button wouldn’t be an obvious improvement; but it wouldn’t increase the amount of dead space, since the button is already carved out of the screen area).
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I look forward to using a rear fingerprint reader on my first Android phone 
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What we need is someone to bring the design sense of Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant to gadgets.
I’ve had a number of SGI workstations, and NeXT, both of which created great designs, especially for the time. I even like some of those thin oracle units you primarily see in the medical industry.
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Roberto Burle Marx
You don’t mean to suggest that ‘Animoji’ are anything less than an engineering triumph, the future of smartphone interfaces; and more than enough reason to take a nice bite out of the screen for an expensive camera module?
Surely seeing your expression mirrored by a pile of poop in near real time is proof enough that Apple has in no way lost the plot and definitely has a coherent vision for the future?
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Seems to me that they’re getting one up on Facebook, Instagram, and Android by giving people real-time animated avatars. Sure, a monkey face that grins when you grin is silly. I think you’re missing the bigger picture of what a huge breakthrough their camera tech is. Apple has a habit of hiding amazing technology behind something silly and frivolous.
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Sony does phones for export? I thought they only made them for the Japan market. Surprise to me, they do sell them outside Japan after all.
Many years ago a Wireless World editorial speculated on what James Clerk Maxwell would have thought of the uses to which his discovery was put.
But that camera module does more. It illuminates your face with infra red so it can identify your face in total darkness. I am waiting for the unintended consequences of this.
To be fair, some brutalist architecture is OK if it’s in proper context. A town near where I grew up (Hoddesdon) had a brutalist shopping centre added in the 1960s. It was an improvement. There was also Harlow New Town, also brutalist.
Today, both are strongholds of the Far Right, Make of that what you will.
Bella figura. Also see Moto Morini, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini and Ferrari.
And Rumi, who built possibly the most artistic motorcycles of all time, designed by an actual artist. Rumis are indeed beautiful. Just don’t use one where there are any hills, because the engine, though also beautiful, was feeble.
You can commute in a Porsche 911 (I know someone who did). You would not want to in an Italian supercar.
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The camera is impressive, especially for the size; but the problem is that amazing technology only counts in tech demos. Once you get to the product stage, ‘hiding amazing technology behind something silly and frivolous’ is the same has ‘something silly and frivolous’, except that the sticker price still includes the amazing technology. And, since Apple tends to be a bit controlling(eg. NFC support availability for anything that isn’t apple pay), the odds are lower that they will at least leave room for someone else to do something cool with it.
At present, it just doesn’t seem like Apple has much in the way of use cases to justify paying the price(in money and in screen space). It’s a cool piece of tech; but cool tech without any particularly cogent user benefit is ultimately unhelpful. And the sort of thing that Apple usually tries to avoid.
I think you misunderstood my comment, sorry.
What I mean is that one of Apple’s MOs since the 80s has been to put together really impressive hardware & software and then package/sell it in a way that moms and dads can understand. Microsoft, Android, Samsung, and Google have all caught up to this tactic, but the cameras on the X are a great example – they’re building industry-leading augmented reality tech into the phone, showing an easy-to-grasp and social-media-friendly use for it (emoji that mimic your face), and then opening that tech up to developers to do awesome stuff with. Sure, it’s just a goofy monkey making funny faces, but they’re the first ones to do this in a consumer product, and considering that Kim Kardashian’s emoji company has made over $100 million, I’d say tapping into AR and social media shows that they’re looking towards the future.
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