What is the difference between a bezel and bezel-less phone?

That black border you see around any display, be it your smartphone display, your TV, your desktop monitor, or even your tablet’s display, is called a bezel. This bezel serves two primary functions. One is that it’s a part of the frame that holds your display in place, and the second is that it hides the electronics that connect your display to the circuit board and other electronics underneath. You might have noticed that many displays have a prominent ‘chin’ or bottom bezel, especially when looking at TVs or computer monitors. The chin is there to house speakers and other components.

Advantages of a bezel-less phone

When it comes to phones, bezels, or the lack thereof, is often an aesthetic choice. While aesthetic preferences are largely personal, we believe the general consensus is that phones simply look nicer with slimmer bezels. Do note that phones that are described as bezel-less in marketing materials aren’t normally free of bezels. The term bezel-less is today generally used to describe phone with slim bezels. 

ALSO READ: Nokia 3310 to Motorola RAZR V3: Landmark phones that shaped the smartphones of today 

The slimness of bezels is often described by the screen:body ratio stat, which is a very good indicator. The screen to bezel ratio on the iPhone 15 for example, is around 87 per cent, while that of the Samsung Galaxy S24  is 90 per cent. If you look at images of the devices side by side, this difference, small though it is, is apparent all the same. One limitation of this stat is that it doesn’t describe how proportionately the bezels are distributed. Many cheaper phones can have a high screen-to-body ratio, but might have a prominent chin.

Again, the primary advantage of slim bezels is aesthetics. Secondarily, slim bezels, especially ones that are proportionately distributed, are also an indicator of a premium device. It takes a lot of tech and attention to detail to slim down bezels by redesigning the underlying electronics. Cheaper LCD displays, for example, cannot have bezels that are as slim as the ones that OLED displays can have. 

Disadvantages of bezel-less phones

Bezel-less phones or, as we’ve established, phones with slim bezels, look great, but have distinct disadvantages.

First up there’s simply the cost of shrinking surrounding electronics to accommodate slimmer bezels. This is the main reason why you’ll usually find the slimmest bezels — without a prominent chin — on premium phones. Slim bezels are also why phones have notches and punch holes these days. Phones from previous generations had bezels that were large enough to accommodate cameras and other sensors.

Secondly, having slim bezels can impact the durability of the device. Glass is inherently fragile, and allowing for no padding around the display edges and corners is risky. In addition, phones that use curved displays to achieve that bezel-less look tend to be even more fragile as the grass is under stress at the edges.

ALSO READ: Preventing screen burn in: What it is and how you can avoid it

Lastly, and this is an issue that has largely been resolved in software, extending the display to the very edge of the front panel to achieve that bezel-less look can result in accidental touches. We grip our phones when using them after all, which results in our fingers resting on the edges of the display. This was a problem in early bezel-less smartphone and tablet designs, but it’s an issue that has since been fixed via software updates that know to ignore accidental touches around the edges of the display.

While bezel-less designs were fragile during the early days of their development, they’re now so common and sturdy that it’s now more jarring to find a phone or display with thick bezels than it is to find one with slim bezels. In 2024, the issues with bezel-less phones are something we need not concern ourselves with (unless you’re exceptionally butter-fingered, that is).