Maybe you're just trying to catch them on wording, but if you're actually wanting them to make it completely bezel-less... I don't think you actually do
It's hard enough to grip the previous iPad minis from the side, an entirely bezel-less tablet would have nowhere to hold it without touching the screen
I can’t imagine using the iPad without the bezels.
With a phone you grip the phone by its back, so you can go bezelless without impacting visibility and causing too many phantom screen taps. With a tablet, however, you will usually grip it by its sides. Having the bezels is almost a necessity here.
The bezel-less screen look nice and futuristic, but they don't seem very practical. When holding a mobile device, your fingers will naturally extend beyond the edge. So your fingers will either cover content or triggers controls on the edge of the screen. To avoid that problem, apps would need to layout their content and controls with a virtual bezel to avoid touches.
I wish they could make one either without a bezel or a bezel that was indistinguishable from the screen so it would look as close to a piece of paper as possible.
A phone fits easily in the palm of one hand whereas a tablet usually requires a stronger grip since it’s much larger than a phone. Just take a look at their product page and you’ll see a model holding the iPad mini with one hand and their thumb already touches part of the screen. If the bezels were thinner it would cause more erroneous inputs. So why engineer thinner bezels when it’s not practical to have them in such a device.
Why would I even want it to? The bezel is functional. It allows me to hold the screen or prop it up without obscuring the display or GUI. I wish bezels would come back.
Counterpoint: I do not want a bezel-less screen. Not only does it ruin the iPhone’s iconic design, but it removes a “safe” area where you can rest your fingers without obscuring any content nor interacting with it.
I hate both my XS and X for this reason (along the lack of physical home button and Touch ID). There’s just no “right” way to handle that phone like there is with the previous generations, every attempt at holding it is a compromise on which content you’re obscuring on the screen.
I don't understand the quest for bezel-less designs. It makes all phones look the same. It has meant that all but one manufacturer have moved the fingerprint reader to the back, or removed it. For someone like me who often use my phone while it's laying flat on the table, it means that I can't easily unlock it. Even FaceID wouldn't help, because it can't see my face in that angle.
Then there's the notch. Come on, that just stupid, just add the 4 or 5mm of bezel a the top, it's fine. Why would I need the extra two top corners of screen, the screen is big enough.
The side bezels on the previous gen were too small IMHO. I ended up putting mine in a case that added a grip on the left hand side. While the device has decent palm rejection, it's never perfect and I find it disconcerting when the only way to hold it from an edge is to cover a portion of the screen. I think it makes sense to make the side bezels slightly larger, though I agree that the proportions of the device are slightly less appealing as a result.
Have you actually used a bezel-less device? They’ve sold hundreds of millions of them. I think it would be a scandal much like the laptop keyboards if their software for ignoring accidental input at the screen edge wasn’t essentially flawless.
This is one of my main motivations. I also hate bezels. Unfortunately there's just no touch layer that would allow small ones :(
If you want an 8" device there's a fairly good market around 300€ already, with my favorite being the Kobo Forma and the Kindle Oasis also being worth a look (along with some others). Both have fairly small bezels on 3 sides and a thick one on one for holding.
My dream would look about like those devices, but yeah - the touch panel issue. I can't imagine a decent UX just based on buttons yet. One possible way forward is finding/making/retrofitting a reader app that is buttom navigable and maybe having a thinkpad nib as a fallback, but I'm not too sure about that since it'd compromise the UX fairly significantly, I'd say.
Since the bezel is really great for holding the device without obscuring the text, I doubt they want to get rid of it.
Phones have other uses like video watching, also the tension between big display, but small outer size is much more important here. You won't put the Kindle into your Jeans pocket anyway.
It's hard enough to grip the previous iPad minis from the side, an entirely bezel-less tablet would have nowhere to hold it without touching the screen
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