After discussing for roughly one and a half hours about its advancements in AI, Google finally announced three new hardware products at its I/O 2023 conference yesterday. And with them came a new unspoken message: Google doesn't care much about what you think of screen bezels.
Google unveiled a new mid-range phone, the Pixel 7a, a new tablet (after eight years of absence) called the Pixel Tablet, and its first-ever foldable phone, unsurprisingly dubbed the Pixel Fold.
One of the things the Pixel 7a, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel Fold have in common is the Tensor G2 chip, developed in-house by Google and manufactured by Samsung. And another thing they have in common is their prominent display bezels.
Google doesn't seem to worry over certain design details
While some manufacturers and people in the industry constantly worry about screen bezel sizes, Google appears to have gone in the other direction. Although it hasn't said anything about this design choice on stage at I/O, the company's unspoken message was clear. And that is: ultra-thin bezels don't really matter.
The Pixel 7a, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel Fold all have thick bezels all around. Even the Pixel Fold — a $1,800 foldable phone that should represent Google's state-of-the-art mobile technology — has chunky bezels around both the cover screen and the inner foldable panel.
Interestingly, Samsung also appears to have lowered its screen bezel ambitions in recent years, at least in its mid-range devices. Its premium phones still strive to have relatively thin bezels, but the Galaxy A54 5G's bezels are far from slick.
No doubt, the size of the bezel surrounding a smartphone or tablet's display is more of an aesthetic characteristic than anything. Some will argue that slightly thicker bezels can even help the user experience, especially when UIs offer gesture-based navigation or when you're handling a large-screen device such as a tablet.
Whether Google's approach will influence other Android OEMs to spend less energy on display bezels remains to be seen. Perhaps Google sent a deliberate message at I/O 2023 for all Android OEMs to hear, and others will pick up on it. Time will tell.
