Nokia top bottom slider concept could be good for achieving a full screen phone (POV)
After MrMobile announced that he will again be revisiting some legendary phones from the past, Juho Sarvikas reached him and shared some of the ideas Nokia Mobile has when he heard that the unique Nokia N95 is going to be the star of MrMobile’s YT video. What he shared was the conceptual drawings of a smartphone that would have a sliding mechanism for revealing speakers and a selfie camera behind the screen. He also sent a non-working prototype to MrMobile to show that Nokia Mobile is actually developing a lot of concepts when searching for an end product. After the video was out, Juho also shared a render of the Nokia 6.3 prototype with a display sliding mechanism. They were exploring different sliding directions like a top, bottom, side, or even angle slide of the display, but that idea might have been put back in the drawer.
Well, it seems that the whole idea of having a sliding mechanism is to reveal something hiding behind the display, and that can only bee speakers, camera and LED flash, and maybe some extra physical buttons. To have speakers hidden behind the screen would probably be pointless since you could not use their full potential if the display is covering them. The user would have to slide the screen and uncover them for every little video or just keep the device open always, which decreases the ergonomics. Actually, there are some nice solutions for stereo speakers being currently used, so that approach could be done instead of placing it behind the screen.
The only good reason to have a sliding mechanism is to hide the selfie camera, which is something that Xiaomi nicely did with Mi Mix 3. That phone was looking great, had the full use of the screen, but the camera would always get full of dust, so you would have to clean it more often.
The other reason to have a sliding mechanism would be to hide a full qwerty keyboard, what Nokia did nicely with Nokia E7, Nokia N900, or Nokia N950. A full physical qwerty keyboard is something that might be of interest to some, but to have a large display above it that can have a virtual qwerty keyboard is pointless, except you are a quick, Machete, finger typer.
Somehow I don’t think we’ll be seeing a full physical qwerty keyboard on Nokia phones, nor Dolby speakers behind the screen, but having a top-bottom sliding mechanism for revealing superb selfie cam with Zeiss lenses would be interesting. There could also be some space for physical or virtual control buttons on the other side, which could still remind us of N95 and give us some extra usability of the device. LG played with that extra LCD screen, so there could be place for at least an e-ink screen for some extra controls, somethng like Asus ZenBook have on touchpad.
I am glad that Nokia mobile is experimenting with new designs, and that there could be a Nokia phone with a fully free display, with just a slight side notch that will be carrying a Nokia logo like in Nokia N900.
What are your thoughts on this?
