The Pixel 8 Pro heralds the death of curved-screen smartphones

• The Pixel 8 Pro. Just look at the gloriously flat display.

Google's Pixel line has been subject to a huge amount of leaks over the past few days: The Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 7a, and even the Pixel Fold have all made the news rounds, somehow all at once. This is going to take a while.

We'll start with the Pixel 8 Pro, which has a set of renders from OnLeaks and Smartprix. It feels like these get leaked earlier and earlier every year, but this phone should be out sometime in Q4. The biggest change in the new renders from last year: a flat display! The smartphone industry might finally be giving up on the pointless gimmick of curved smartphone displays.

We have been railing against curved smartphone displays for nine years now. Samsung, the world's leading smartphone display manufacturer, figured out years ago that it could bend an OLED panel, making the left and right sides of the display curve downward and wrap around the phone body. Samsung never actually considered whether this was a good idea, though, and curved displays only bring a host of negatives to your phone design. A curved display distorts the image of your apps, videos, and photos, which were all meant to be displayed on a flat surface. In many lighting conditions, the curve captures a ton of glare, making it hard to see anything that's actually in that area. The curve also makes it a lot easier to accidentally touch the curved parts of the screen, which will generally stop the touchscreen from working.