Huawei's new smartphone design patent reveals an in-display earpiece technology

In the industry-effort to provide a completely bezel-less screen, Huawei seems to be upping its game with a unique new method, which basically pokes a hole in the display itself.

A new patent by  Huawei  was recently published in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The filed patent is accompanied by a bunch of images that show off what a completely bezel-less phone may look like in the future. Like you can see in the image below, the patent imagines a horizontal cutout in the display itself.

This cutout will apparently house the in-display earpiece, but not the selfie camera as one would expect. Samsung  recently introduced the Infinity-O-panel at the SDC 2018 keynote , which showed the phone sporting a circular shaped cut-out on the top left corner of the panel for selfie camera.

But considering Huawei is trying to achieve the completely bezel-less look with this patent, wonder where the front camera will go then!

The cut-out in the display as per the illustration is quite thin, and as we said, the front-facing camera is un-spottable.

The top edge of the phone will apparently be 3.5 mm wide, just enough to feature a headphone jack, whereas the bottom edge will sport the USB-C port.

Further, the patent shows the phone with curved edges. We see a volume and power button placed on the right side of the frame.

At the back, the patent drawing shows a vertical camera setup, which may house a dual camera. Below the camera setup is a circular cutout which will possibly be the LED flash, but looking at the size it can be a third camera or a fingerprint sensor as well.

A lot of patent designs are submitted by companies each year to get accepted, but this does not give the confirmation of the device to be rolling out in the market.

In addition to that, while this patent reveals an in-display ear-piece technology design, according to  GizmoChina, Huawei may be bringing an in-display front-facing camera with the upcoming Huawei P30 series.

The application for the patent was submitted on 2 September back in 2016, however, it was approved and published only on 6 November 2018.