Archos is making a smartphone with a corner notch

Last year, we saw some surprising options to simulate the cutout via software in Android 9 Pie’s Developer options. While at the time, the purpose of a corner display cutout was unknown, we now have at least one device, which has embraced a notch on its top right corner, unveiled by Archos, the French smartphone maker. The Archos Oxygen 68XL uses a corner notch to accommodate the selfie camera.

Archos Oxygen 68XL comes with a magnificent 6.85-inch display with a 19:9 aspect ratio. But being a budget-oriented smartphone, the resolution is limited to 1352×640 which is even lower than HD+. In my opinion, the notch does not look very bad and displays with such notches can serve as cheaper alternatives to punch-hole displays we saw on the Honor View 10 and the Samsung Galaxy S10 series. Additionally, there’s a fingerprint scanner located on the back.

The Archos smartphone uses a MediaTek Helio P22 chipset and 3GB of RAM. It features 32GB of storage which can be further expanded using a micro SD card. It has an 8MP primary sensor on the back along with a VGA sensor for depth effect. In the corner notch of the Archos Oxygen 68XL lies a 5MP camera for selfies.

The Archos Oxygen 68XL is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery and supports dual SIM cards with VoLTE. It also supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, GLONASS, and has USB type-C and a headphone jack for connectivity. Lastly, the smartphone is powered by Android 9 Pie.

Archos has priced the Oxygen 68L at 149 euros (~$170). Apart from the corner cutout smartphone, the French company has also released announced the Oxygen 57 and Oxygen 63 with waterdrop-style notches and a starting price of 99 euros. Both of the devices come with Unisoc chipsets and run on Android 9 Pie.

As per the launch statement, all three devices will be showcased at MWC 2019 and will be available starting May 2019. As for other devices with the corner notch, the $1,980 Galaxy Fold is secretly one but its glory veils the corner notch which is meant to place the dual cameras inside the fold. When the Fold is open, you could either use Samsung’s wallpaper with dark corners to hide the notch or (hopefully) turn the background of the status bar to black.