What Happened

A Reddit user in the r/explainlikeimfive community asked why electronic displays still need bezels despite ongoing efforts to minimize them. This reflects a broader consumer observation about the smartphone industry’s “bezel-less” marketing claims versus physical reality.

While manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and others have dramatically reduced bezel sizes over the past decade, completely eliminating them remains technically challenging. Even the most advanced “edge-to-edge” displays retain thin borders, particularly at the bottom where home indicators appear.

Why It Matters

Understanding bezel necessity helps consumers make informed purchasing decisions and sets realistic expectations for future device designs. The persistent presence of bezels despite technological advances illustrates the complex tradeoffs between aesthetics, functionality, and manufacturing costs in consumer electronics.

This question also reveals how marketing terminology like “bezel-less” can be misleading, as truly borderless displays don’t exist in mainstream consumer devices.

Background

Bezels serve several critical engineering functions that cannot be easily eliminated:

Component Housing: Bezels contain essential hardware including cameras, sensors, speakers, and antenna connections. Front-facing cameras, proximity sensors, and ambient light sensors require physical space and optical pathways that bezels traditionally provide.

Structural Integrity: The border area provides mounting points for the display panel and protects fragile screen edges from damage. Without adequate structural support, displays become more susceptible to cracks and failures from drops or pressure.

Touch Rejection: Bezels create “dead zones” that prevent accidental touches when gripping devices. Without these areas, users would constantly trigger unintended screen interactions while holding phones normally.

Manufacturing Tolerances: Perfect edge-to-edge alignment between display panels and device frames requires extremely precise manufacturing, increasing production costs and failure rates.

Electrical Connections: Display drivers and ribbon cables connecting screens to main circuit boards need physical space, typically located in bezel areas.

Historically, early smartphones had large bezels housing physical buttons and extensive antenna arrays. The iPhone’s 2007 introduction began the trend toward larger screens with smaller borders, but even today’s most advanced devices maintain minimal bezels for the reasons outlined above.

What’s Next

Future bezel reduction will likely focus on innovative solutions rather than complete elimination:

Under-Display Technology: Cameras and sensors are increasingly moving beneath display panels, though current implementations still compromise image quality and require specialized manufacturing.

Flexible Displays: Curved or wraparound screens can extend usable area while maintaining necessary structural elements on device backs or sides.

Improved Materials: Advanced adhesives and stronger glass formulations may eventually allow thinner structural borders.

Software Adaptation: Better palm rejection algorithms and gesture controls could reduce the need for physical grip zones.

However, completely bezel-free designs remain unlikely due to fundamental physics and ergonomic requirements. The industry trend suggests continued gradual reduction rather than elimination.

Consumers should expect marketing claims about “bezel-less” displays to remain somewhat aspirational, with practical devices maintaining small but necessary borders for the foreseeable future.