Samsung is looking to bring back the notification LED to the front of its forthcoming Galaxy Note 10, which is set to be unveiled on August 7, 2019. The small – but incredibly useful – feature was ditched from the flagship Galaxy S10 series as part of the recent move to an all-screen Infinity-O display, which shrinks the bezels around the screen and embeds the front-facing camera into an O-shaped cut-out.
Thankfully, Samsung has seemingly found a way to include the notification light and keep the Infinity-O design intact, which will debut on the Galaxy Note 10 next month.
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Dutch technology blog LetsGoDigital (opens in new tab) has unearthed an intriguing new patent that suggests the Seoul-based company has found a way to incorporate both the hole-punch selfie camera design and an LED indication light.
Filed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO, the Samsung patent seemingly describes a system that uses LED lights around the hole-punch camera cut-out to let smartphone owners know when they have an unanswered text message, email, or call to return.
Galaxy Note 10 is likely to follow in the footsteps of the Note 9 and include an always-on AMOLED display that lets users know they've received a notification without waking the screen, which fulfils a similar function to the LED light.
Although the Galaxy S10e, Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10 Plus are missing the LED light itself, a number of third-party apps have launched to reinstate the ability to the camera cut-out. One example is the aptly-named Holey Light (opens in new tab).
Reintroducing the hardware LED feature itself would enable Samsung to starve these third-party apps of their success pretty quickly.
Elsewhere, the Galaxy Note 10 is widely-tipped to relocate the camera cut-out from the right-hand corner of the display to the middle, offer new experiences with a next-generation S Pen, and be the fastest phone Samsung has ever built.
Unlike previous generations of the Galaxy Note series, Samsung will debut two models – a Galaxy Note 10, and Galaxy Note 10 Pro. The former will have a 6.28-inch display while the pricier Note 10 Pro will feature a 6.75-inch screen. Inside, the productivity-focused handsets will be largely the same. Each of these variants will launch in both 4G and 5G flavours, bringing the total number of handsets to four.
Of course, it's worth taking this information with a small pinch of salt – nothing is confirmed until it's produced on-stage from Samsung mobile wizard DJ Koh. As always, T3 will have all the news from Galaxy Unpacked as it happens, to stay tuned for the latest on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.
