Galaxy Note 10 rumored to not have any physical buttons

Because this worked out sooooo well last time.

We're still quite a few months away before Samsung launches the Galaxy Note 10, but a new report has made a pretty bold claim about the phone. Per industry sources that spoke with ET News, the Note 10 will be Samsung's first phone to not have any physical buttons.

As ET News reports, translated from Korean:

According to industry sources on April 25, Samsung Electronics will apply keyless technology to its next smartphone. It is important to remove the power and volume buttons on the side of the smartphone. Samsung has developed a technology that can turn on and off the power and increase or decrease the volume without touching the button.

The kicker? It's also stated that "Samsung Electronics aims to apply this keyless technology to Galaxy Note 10, which will be released this fall."

If you recall, this is not the first time a company has tried to release a phone without any physical buttons. HTC attempted this in 2018 with the HTC U12, and while software updates did fix it later on down the road, the implementation was a hot mess at launch. The U12 still had "buttons", but they didn't actually click. You simply applied pressure to them to do things like change the volume or lock the screen.

The idea is cool, but what are we actually gaining?

Exact details remain unclear, but at least from this report, it sounds like the Galaxy Note 10 may not even have those fake buttons in order to keep the sides completely smooth and uniform.

Going a step even further, this past January saw Meizu announce the Zero — an Android phone that lacks not only buttons, but a charging port, speaker grill, and SIM card slot, too.

This trend of buttonless and portless phones certainly appears to be picking up traction right now, so while I'm not surprised Samsung is supposedly looking into doing something with it, I can't say I'm overly excited either. The idea is interesting, but I'm not yet convinced that any of the benefits that come with it are worth it. At least not right now.

Bring on the portless phones and keep the weird ideas coming