From the iPhone to the Essential Phone, here are the 5 best-designed smartphone notches out there

Without a doubt, the rumored Pixel 3 XL has the worst notch. If the leaks are accurate, it's going to be massive, and will surely by noticeable. Rather than embracing the notch, Google is seemingly shouting it at you.

As with other Android phones, you'll likely be able to change the display around the notch to a black color so it looks like the traditional Android notifications bar. It could potentially give the illusion that this monstrous notch isn't there, but it would also replicate the appearance of a rather large top bezel. At least it'll give some symmetry to match the burly chin bezel at the bottom.

The notch on the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR isn't awful, but it's incredibly wide compared to notches on most Android phones.

Perhaps the iPhone notch scores poorly because Apple doesn't seem to be embracing it. Instead, the company tried to hide it with its new half-planet wallpapers, as if it were ashamed of it:

If Apple won't own the notch, why should anyone else?

Down the middle of the list is almost every Android phone with a notch — they're unassuming and not too big. Plus, they're not as deep nor as wide as the iPhone notch.

The Huawei P20 Pro, OnePlus 6, and LG G7 are perfect examples of notched Android phones.

The Essential Phone's notch does look a bit like a wart on the display when you have brightly colored content on the screen. But at least it's small, and it doesn't get in the way as much as the others.

The undisputed best notch on a smartphone can be found on the Oppo F9 for its water droplet notch design. It's small and minimally invasive — in fact, it can hardly be noticed on the left phone above.

The F9 is also an example of a phone maker that completely owns and embraces the notch and decided to make the best of it with artistic design. Full points to Oppo for that one.

Incidentally, the Oppo F9 could essentially be the upcoming OnePlus 6T in disguise. Previous Oppo phones have had identical designs as OnePlus phones, so you could be seeing the characteristics of the Oppo F9 in the upcoming OnePlus 6T.