Xiaomi’s Mi Mix Alpha is a Phone that is entirely made of screen.
Xiaomi’s Mi Mix series has always broken the boundaries of phone screens and form factors, from the original model that kicked off the bezel wars to last year’s sliding, notchless Mi Mix 3. Today we are starting to see waterfall displays with extreme curved edges, Xiaomi is taking this to a wild new level with the Mi Mix Alpha.
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 2 body ratio, a stat that no longer makes any sense to cite at all.
The all new Mix Alpha uses Samsung, new 108 MP camera sensor, which was co-developed with Xiaomi. Along other high resolution Samsung sensors the pixels are combined into 2 by 2 squares for better light sensitivity in low light, which in this case will produce 27MP images.
Time will tell that how it will 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 because you just turn the phone around and use the rear portion of the display as a viewfinder for the 108 megapixel shooter.
As for the phone’s it has 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.
Xiaomi describes the Mix Alpha as its concept smartphone and isn’t going to be mass-producing it any time soon. The phone will go into small scale production this year and go on sale in December for 19,999 yuan, or about 1,99,209 INR . The original Mi Mix was also given the concept label and released in small quantities, with the Mi Mix 2 following a year later as a more mainstream device.
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:
