Xiaomi has been coming through with a lineup of concept phones that are designed from the ground up to be unique. They recently released a phone called ‘Mi Mix Alpha’ that surpasses all bounds and is made entirely of screen all around – yes, you read right, a phone with 360-degree screen.
It shows what’s possible if you disregard conventional smartphone design. From the pressure-sensitive buttons on the side to the accurate palm rejection, Xiaomi has implemented the (nearly) all-screen phone quite well.
The “surround screen” on the Alpha wraps entirely around the device to the point where it meets the camera module on the other side. The effect is of a phone that’s almost completely made of screen, with status icons like network signal and battery charge level displayed on the side. Pressure-sensitive volume buttons are also shown on the side of the phone. Xiaomi is claiming more than 180 percent screen-to-body ratio, a stat that no longer makes any sense to cite at all.
Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha is expected to cost around Rs. 404,999 is Pakistan. On one hand, this design poses obvious issues with cost, durability, battery life, accidental touch recognition, privacy, and so on.
The Mix Alpha uses Samsung’s new 108-megapixel camera sensor, which was co-developed with Xiaomi. As with other recent high-resolution Samsung sensors, pixels are combined into 2×2 squares for better light sensitivity in low light, which in this case will produce 27-megapixel images.
As for the phone’s more traditional specs, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor, 5G connectivity, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, 40W wired fast-charging, and a 4,050mAh battery. That last spec would perhaps suggest that Xiaomi doesn’t imagine you having the whole screen turned on all the time.
We’ll have to see how that works in practice, but the 1/1.33-inch sensor is unusually large for a phone and should give the Mix Alpha a lot of light-gathering capability. There’s also no need for a selfie camera — you just turn the phone around and use the rear portion of the display as a viewfinder for the 108-megapixel shooter.
Read more: Samsung’s foldable smartphone is finally coming
Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha is expected to cost around Rs. 404,999 is Pakistan. On one hand, this design poses obvious issues with cost, durability, battery life, accidental touch recognition, privacy, and so on. On the other, well, just look at it: