Samsung's new Galaxy A35 is the first in the A3x series to employ an Infinity-O display. It's a welcomed change, but even so, the Galaxy A35 may have joined the party a bit too late and missed out on some cool party tricks.
Let's quickly evaluate what the Infinity-O display cutout is today. Arguably, it is the most aesthetically pleasing of all Infinity solutions — the other two being the Infinity-U (used by the A33 and A34) and Infinity-V notches. However, neither of these designs have any practical uses. Not anymore.
A few years back, the Infinity-O cutout used to have a bit of a software component. Specifically, users could enable Edge Lighting notification effects around the circular selfie camera cutout.
That's no longer the case. The default Edge Lighting options built into One UI no longer offer camera ring options. In fact, the Galaxy A series doesn't even have proper Edge Lighting effects — only particle effects. And the Edge Lighting+ Good Lock module doesn't fix any of this.
How much does Infinity-O matter?
So then, the Galaxy A35's Infinity-O cutout offers no practical benefits over the Infinity-U notch employed by devices like the Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A34. And whatever notification effects the A35 could have used a few years ago are no longer available, neither through the default One UI experience nor Good Lock.
Today, Infinity-O is nothing more than a design most people prefer over the Infinity-U and Infinity-V notches. And rightfully so. Plus, it's a bit of a status symbol. The Infinity-O design is the costlier one to manufacture and has so far been reserved for the Galaxy A5x series and up.
Nevertheless, the bar seems to keep lowering. Now, it's low enough that the Galaxy A35 can cut it. I'm guessing every Samsung phone will eventually have Infinity-O, so even though you could say this design element is a status symbol right now, it might not be so forever.
All in all, the Galaxy A35 is arguably prettier than devices like the Galaxy A33 and A34 thanks to the Infinity-O design. But if you are planning to upgrade from one of these older models, don't expect any practical uses out of the new camera cutout, like camera ring-type customization options through Edge Lighting or Edge Lighting+. That era seems to be gone, and the Galaxy A3x series missed it.
You could say Infinity-O cutouts might be less distracting, and therefore more practical, but that might be a bit of a reach. In the end, it look prettier and more modern. That must count for something.
