Samsung showcased an updated version of its Galaxy A8 smartphone in China, which does away with the front notch in favour of a small lens present in the top left corner of the screen.

The vendor described the lens as “in-screen aperture technology”.

With Honor also talking about integrating the front camera into the display in its anticipated View20 smartphone, this seems to be the next stage for vendors looking to eliminate the notch, which itself was the result of a technical challenge as smartphone bezels got ever smaller.

And, unsurprisingly, Samsung’s new “Infinity-o” display has been seen as a hint of what will come with its next flagship, Galaxy S10.

Called A8s, the 6.4-inch screen device also has a rear-mounted triple camera set-up, with 24MP main camera alongside 10MP telephoto and 5MP “blurring” camera, to offer range of imaging options.

Powered by an octacore Snapdragon 710 processor, which sits between Qualcomm’s mid-tier chips and fully-fledged flagship silicon, it has 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage. A version with 8GB of RAM will also be available.

While the device has so far only been revealed for China, Samsung’s A8 line does traditionally see wider availability. In 2017, the global A8 release took place later in December, meaning there is still time for a global announcement before Christmas.