Xiaomi just showed us their vision for the future in their first quad-curved waterfall display concept phone. After the Mi Mix Alpha and its wrap-around screen from 2019, the new concept debuts what Xiaomi calls their "first 88° hyper quad-curved" display. It's a striking unibody design with no ports or physical buttons of any kind.
Xiaomi explained in a press release that the quad-curved concept is eventually meant to bring a “just a screen” form factor to life. The extreme curvature of the glass and the plethora of technologies to replicate buttons and physical ports are manufactured based on Xiaomi’s self-developed patents.
Currently, curved screens aren’t without their flaws. A flexible display is sandwiched between two curved glass panels to produce a curved screen. But its performance takes a hit if the glass panels are not perfectly aligned. It’s doubly true for a screen that curves around all four edges.
Other than registering unintended touches, they also distort visual elements and create artifacts. Xiaomi claims to have solved both these problems with a new ‘3D Bonding’ process.
“To attach such a piece of 88° quad-curved glass to a flexible display, an innovative screen stacking design was adopted through our breakthrough 3D bonding process,” Xiaomi explained in the press release. The curve is made and polished under high temperature and pressure, using four polishing tools and over ten polishing processes. The corners are reinforced, however.
The buttons, speakers, and all ports were removed to stretch the display around all four sides. No less than 46 alternative technologies, from the first film display acoustics to the next-gen under-display cameras and pressure-sensitive touch sensors, replace the physical interface in this Xiaomi concept.
Naturally, the concept is meant to showcase Xiaomi’s technologies since it's not a consumer-ready phone. So far, we have only seen product renders. But according to The Verge, a real-life prototype of this phone does exist.
