Xiaomi’s new concept phone has a waterfall display on all four edges

Xiaomi has announced its latest phone concept: a “quad-curved waterfall display”. This means that not only does the unnamed phone’s screen have deep 88 degree ‘waterfall’ curves on the left and right sides, but also on the top and bottom, leaving no room for ports or buttons. Xiaomi says this is intended to “push the boundaries of the display to infinity” and to enable a true, port-free unibody design.

The obvious question is how that could possibly work in the corners of the screen, and based on the promotional images, it looks like Xiaomi is just leaving them blank with small, round cutouts. Not really infinite, but a neat trick nonetheless – although for people who already don’t like the relatively modest curved displays on phones like the Galaxy S21 Ultra, this sounds like their nightmare.

Announcing a concept device in full via renders hasn’t really shown the impact of it in person, as was common before COVID. A Xiaomi representative explains The edge that this phone really exists and they’ve used it themselves, for what it’s worth. The display is the result of “countless breakthroughs in glass bending and laminating technology,” Xiaomi said, and “represents the sum of 46 groundbreaking patents”.

This concept phone follows last week’s announcement of the seemingly bizarre Xiaomi technology, the truly wireless charging system “Mi Air Charge”. And in 2019 Xiaomi unveiled the Mi Mix Alpha phone, which had a display that enveloped almost the entire device, although it never went on sale in the end. This latest concept may never become a commercially available device.

Xiaomi will announce the global availability of its significantly more conventional flagship Mi 11 at an event next Monday, February 8.