Sony has finally decided to move away from its sharp-edged rectangular design for its smartphones, which the company has been using since 2013.
Dubbed OmniBalance, the design principles Sony has used for its handsets, found in the likes of its Xperia range, is the reason why its phones stuck with an integrated power button and fingerprint scanner, as well as consistent camera placement and display layout and ratio.
But even Sony has grown tired of its own design principles, with Kenichiro Hibi, the managing director of Sony’s India division, telling The Indian Express that the Japanese tech company is going to try out a different smartphone design, though it won’t completely abandon OmniBalance.
“We have deployed an Omnibalance design as long as the X series continues to be available in the market [sic]. Also, we are planning to launch new generation of products and you can expect a complete new design from the devices,” said Hibi.
Acknowledging how other smartphone makers are adopting bezel-less designs and 18:9 aspect ratio displays, seen in the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and the LG G6, Hibi suggested that Sony may be looking at having an aesthetic that adopts some of the design cues from 2017’s line-up of flagship Android phones.
When such a new design will make its debut was not mentioned by Hibi other than it would appear “soon”; we’d expect to see a Sony handset with a fresh design potentially appear at CES 2018 or MWC some weeks later.
While Sony’s phones like the Xperia XZ1 have received decent reviews, mounting competition from other big phone brands and the debut of the iPhone X with its radical departure from Apple’s previous iPhone designs, means Sony is well overdue an injection of fresh design thinking into its smartphone line-up.
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