The recently announced Xiaomi design patent shows that it may make a new surround screen smartphone in the future, according to the patent announcement of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA).
Xiaomi applied for the design patent on December 25, 2018, and it was officially announced on January 10, 2020.
It can be seen from the design sketch in the patent that the phone uses a three-sided surround screen design. In addition to the front and rear screens, the right side of the phone is also the screen.
The three bezels on the front of the phone look relatively narrow, there is no front camera, and the rear uses a dual camera design.
In addition, there is a new mobile phone design that uses dual screens on the front and back. There is no border on the top of the screen. From the top view, there is a dividing line in the middle, and the patent does not specify whether it is a foldable screen design.
Xiaomi released the 5G era concept phone MIX Alpha on September 24, 2019. It uses a surround screen solution, the body is surrounded by a whole screen, extending from the front to the sides to the back.
The price is 19,999 yuan ($2890). It was originally planned to hit the market at the end of December 2019 but there is still no specific launch date.
Xiaomi claims that MIX Alpha has achieved a number of technological breakthroughs, including innovative flexible screen lamination solutions, innovative flexible screen fingerprint unlocking, and innovative screen sounding technology.
Xiaomi MIX Alpha uses a 7.92-inch flexible OLED display with a resolution of 2088 × 2250. It is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus flagship platform, equipped with 12GB memory + 512GB storage, battery capacity is 4050mAh, and supports 40W wired flash charging.
However, Xiaomi MIX Alpha is still not available to customers despite claiming it has mass production capabilities for the MIX Alpha.