I held the primary actually bezel-free telephone

Cast your thoughts again a decade or so, and smartphone makers had been obsessed with shrinking the bezel on telephones. Screens received larger, the black bars round them received smaller, and for some time it appeared like actually edge-to-edge shows had been imminent.

Then, progress simply stopped. The bezel shrunk down till it was a millimeter or so on each aspect, on nearly each telephone, and telephone producers appeared to agree as one which this was most likely far sufficient.

Tecno, a price range model in the identical household as Itel and Infinix, has stepped as much as see if it may push issues just a bit additional. Its new system, the Bezelless, is strictly an idea telephone, by no means destined to go on sale, but it surely proves the purpose: It is feasible to take away a smartphone display’s bezel totally — as long as you don’t thoughts nonetheless having just a little body across the edge.

The firm despatched me a prototype of the Bezelless forward of its unveiling on the IFA commerce present in Berlin, so I may see it in motion for myself. There is really no black border at throughout the 144Hz, 1.5K, 6.78-inch display, apart from the tiniest trace of a fraction of a black line I can see just below the body after I have a look at the telephone at an angle. Looking head-on, the display ends, then the body begins, and that’s that.

There remains to be an inactive edge to the OLED panel, however Tecno has hidden it beneath the body. The key to the design is the usage of two layers of canopy glass: The high layer goes as much as the sting of the body, whereas the decrease glass layer and the OLED panel itself each prolong beneath it. Designing the telephone this manner had knock-on results. It meant constructing the telephone backwards, mounting the show from the telephone’s rear slightly than its entrance, which in flip requires securing the display from the entrance, with a customized adhesive that sits between the body and the decrease piece of glass.

And whereas I would cynically level out that the body right here might be a hair thicker than on most different trendy smartphones, it’s a fractional factor. Stand the Bezelless aspect by aspect with this 12 months’s flagship Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus, and there’s clearly rather less materials wrapping across the display — although there’s not a lot in it.

Tecno bullishly claims that the Bezelless “redefines how users will interact with their phones in the AI era,” which feels a bit a lot. Manufacturers stopped shrinking the bezel as a result of it received sufficiently small that most individuals stopped caring. Removing a strip of black from the display doesn’t make this telephone really feel dramatically extra spectacular or helpful than every other I’ve examined this 12 months. A purposeful improve, this isn’t.

Still, it does look good. Helped by the sunshine silver body, the show feels extra expansive with no black bar enclosing it. The Android interface now stretches proper to the sting, and pictures and movies haven’t any border in any respect (properly, no less than on two edges — eradicating the bezel isn’t sufficient to resolve letterboxing). It additionally permits a fractionally bigger show, or a fractionally smaller telephone, relying on the way you have a look at it. It’s welcome, however not a sport changer — eliminating the front-facing fringe of the body totally would really feel extra dramatic, however that’s one other ask totally.

As an idea system, the specs of the Bezelless don’t matter an excessive amount of. But for the curious, it’s powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7400e chipset, bolstered by 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. There’s a giant 6,000mAh battery, although the telephone itself is pretty slim and light-weight; I believe silicon-carbon is likely to be concerned. What seem like three rear cameras are literally two — a 50-megapixel principal shooter and 8-megapixel ultrawide — with a single 32-megapixel selfie digital camera on the entrance. I’m just a little shocked Tecno didn’t go all in and use an under-display selfie digital camera to finish the all-screen impact.

The rear of the telephone is enjoyable too, with a crimson notification LED and a butterfly design created with a 3D impact, in order that the wings seem to rise out of the telephone as you progress it within the mild. It brings to thoughts Tecno’s different idea gadgets from MWC this 12 months, which included a telephone with a color-changing E Ink rear, and one other with neon inbuilt. Most thrilling of that set was a magnetic, modular idea with a spread of suitable equipment.

None of these ideas have but turn out to be actual merchandise, and I doubt the Bezelless will both, and positively no time quickly. But it does show that it’s doable, which raises the prospect of whether or not one other producer will deliver the thought to market. Apple has lengthy been rumored to be creating a bezel-less, “edge-to-edge” iPhone for the telephone’s twentieth anniversary subsequent 12 months. If nothing else, Tecno simply proved that rumor isn’t so far-fetched.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge