Until recently, the black notch at the top of smartphone displays seemed to be a necessary evil. It contains all of the components necessary for face identification, taking selfies and all the other things it was thought couldn’t go anywhere else. Until now, that is, seeing as various brands are looking for solutions to eliminate that black strip that we have all become accustomed to, but which nobody actually likes.

The latest idea comes from Samsung. With the Galaxy A8s, the Koreans have put the notch out to grass in favour of a hole-punched screen. The hole appears in the upper left-hand corner, and although it is also irritating, it is undoubtedly less invasive than its all-black colleague, particularly when watching videos, films or TV series on the display. For other aspects, the A8s is a very interesting mid-range telephone, with a 6.4-inch display (2340 x 1080 pixels), a Snapdragon 710 processor with 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB internal memory which can be expanded with a microSD. At the back is the classic vertical triple camera already seen on the previous Galaxy A7, while the front optics are inserted into the hole, as we know, with a 24-megapixel sensor.

Samsung is not alone in this move. Huawei’s Nova 4 and Honor's View 20, both due in 2019, have also adopted the hole-punch option. Last year Vivo went further with the Nex, which has a hidden front camera which pops up when required and then disappears back into the body of the phone. The advantage is that the screen is left unblemished, but a