The Next Screen Evolution: Bezel-less Screen.

The Next Screen Evolution: Bezel-less Screen.

The Bezel-less concept has been around for a long time, yet when this idea came to me, I was surprised than no company has thought of this before! This can easily be the next big need of young consumers who constitute the biggest section of the smartphone/tablet market.




What is Bezel-Less Screens:

A hardware design for screens that removes any physical front-face where multiple small screens can be physically aligned to constitute a larger screen with the help of supporting software, which breaks down the image to be displayed by each screen. Connectivity can be wired as well as wireless. See the image below: 

 

A more neat and refined form is this:
 

So its typical smartphone/tablet usage can include, very social activities:

- Imagine going to a house party of a friend who has no extra large tv? No sweat! Join together your bezel-less smartphones/tablets with the help of a cheap stand or just make-shift support and voila! 

- Imagine, your sweet partner has a romantic movie to watch tonight, so the question is which Tablet to use? mine or her's? No Problemo! We will join the screen together and watch the movie TOGETHER on OUR screen :)

- Organise a large screen in public, for showing support for a demonstration, election rally, you name it! Just join together your phones/tablets and make a temporary screen to show your support, "Each Vote Counts" becomes "Each Screen Counts"

- A team of 4 people providing information in remote areas to people in need, like Cancer Awareness, Sanitation, etc.

and much more! 

Want more reasons? Here are some:

- Students (who I mentioned above) have low pockets, big needs. And most of these needs are in a very social environments, they can't most of the times afford a big screen, and most of the times it is not much portable.

- It is creative, a piece of puzzle in everyone's pocket.

- It is cost saving, no more need of proper screens and the cost of renting/buying them!

- It distributes the cost and space over a larger number of people instead the lone 'Joe'.

- Smartphones/Tablets are going touch-screen anyway.

A very good concept art is given by a industry veteran here: 

http://gizmodo.com/brix/

http://www.yankodesign.com/2007/08/28/two-brix-are-better-than-one/

Challenges

Indeed there are lot of challenges which I would name below, but if you think about it, they are not that hard to overcome efficiently in this age and time. 

- Without Bezel, corners of the screens are more prone to accidental damage. (There are tons of screen guards which we still use)

- A smartphone can't be entirely screen only, since some space is needed for the audio output-input ends. (But then again, the result would be somewhere between the first image and second image above, as this hardly takes up any space now)

- It might be a bit unappealing to people, to just have screens (which can be overcome by a phone case like accessory)

There might be more, but the thing is, we are actually quite close to it, and its all that possible. For example the recent Motorola:
  

Cut off the top part having Motorola, and a bit more of tweak, with a software update, and boink! we are there!