About

Samsung is an incredibly popular smartphone company (one of the biggest in the world) and each year they release two different high-end series smartphones. After the Galaxy Note 9 was released, the company held a developer conference where they detailed the types of camera cutouts they were preparing to use for the future.

Most were various shapes of the traditional notch that we’ve been seeing but the Infinity O style showed they were willing to cut a hole right through the smartphone screen. Since then, we started to see a number of other companies pushing out phones with these “hole punch” style camera cutouts. But it wasn’t until Samsung released the Galaxy S10 series that a trend started forming.

Until this point, there have been various users using cleverly positioned wallpapers to help blend the notch into the bezel of the smartphone. Some OEMs have even added in features to extend the Status Bar lower in order to help hide the notch. This isn’t as easily done with wallpapers though which is why they used specific types of wallpapers (such as AMOLED black).

Enter the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy S10e

Then Samsung launched the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, and the Galaxy S10e during the first quarter of 2019. Usually a notch was physically connected to the top bezel but these devices had display pixels above the camera cutout. Some people liked the idea, others did not. But what came shortly after their release was a trend that let people see things differently.

I am fairly confident in saying that it was @MattCabb who started the trend but he may not have been the first to make one of these special wallpapers. His wallpapers were starting to be shared across various social media platforms and then they started to be picked up in hands-on and review videos.

This turned into them being talked about on multiple Android publications and it’s made people change their mind when it comes to the “hole punch” camera cutout. Instead of trying to hide the camera cut out, these new wallpapers drew focus to them. The first Bender wallpaper from Futurama was nothing more than him positioned to where the Galaxy S10+ cameras were used as its eyes.

People no longer wanted to hide the cutout and then began to highlight it with these wallpapers.

Then the Subreddit was Created

Once it was clear that this was going to trend the /r/GalaxyS10Wallpapers subreddit was created. This did a bunch of this movement as it helped to bring creative minds together with the community. People could submit their own wallpaper and let the community vote on if they liked it or not. Reddit has always been great for these types of communities.

However, it’s difficult to catalog and organize things on Reddit. Even if you use flair for posts and let the community sort by them. . .there isn’t much room for organization. Reddit is good to letting the newest, most popular things rise to the top but it can be quite chaotic. This is especially true when it comes to reposts (which Reddit is known for) and requests (which can be troublesome for this particular subreddit).

I’ve seen over a handful of requests for the same Baymax wallpaper for the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10e. Sure, you could tell the user to search the subreddit for “baymax”, but they are only going to see the requests (and reposts) flood the results. As soon as I identified this issue I created www.GalaxyS10Wallpapers.com

Now Things Stay Organized

With a website in place, I can gather up as many custom wallpapers for these smartphones as possible. I’ve pulled the majority from the subreddit (since it has become the hub of the trend), but I have also pulled a lot from Twitter, Facebook, and personal submissions (directly emailed to me). At the start, I was able to write a creative name for the wallpaper, give it a few sentences for context and even added in some tags for even more organization.

I am unable to keep up with the tags, or writing about each of them now though. There are just too many. The best that I can do is go through as many as I can find, save the new ones that I can find, and upload/publish them here on the website. I am, however, able to add more to the website (so I can keep up better) while also making sure to give credit where credit is due.

You can still search for what you want (star wars is a popular search term) and get nothing but results for that particular franchise. You can also tap/click on one of the categories (Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, or Galaxy S10e) and find wallpapers that are made for your device. I do hope to be able to expand upon what the website offers in the future.

That will depend entirely on if I am able to turn the website into a viable service to the community. It’s easy to create a website but it takes work to keep it fresh, to add new content, and to pay the hosting bills. I certainly have confidence that it will be able to stand on its own two legs but that depends on a number of factors.