With all that said, there were limits to what Xiaomi was able to pull off here. If for instance you were wondering how Xiaomi’s engineers managed to stretch and bend that glass around the phone’s corners, the answer is simple: they didn’t. The company’s dark, moody product renders and videos do a great job of hiding them, but there are small cut-outs in each corner. So much for the “just a screen” look the company was gunning for.
Beyond all the screen cleverness on display, this latest concept is also notable for its complete lack of physical controls and ports. Instead, the company leaned on 46 of its patents and built-in clever alternatives like pressure-sensitive touch sensors in place of buttons and “industry-first flexible film display acoustic technology” in lieu of a traditional speaker and grille. The lack of a USB-C port also means wireless charging, and who knows — perhaps it’s meant to work with another of Xiaomi’s recent announcements, a remote wireless charging system the company calls “Mi Air Charge.”
Granted, not all of these developments are particularly new, but the fact that Xiaomi is exploring how all of these disparate developments can be used in tandem is one of the clearest signs yet that it plans to release a fully unibody smartphone in the future. They’re not the only ones either. Rumors have long suggested that Apple would like to ditch ports across its iPhone line entirely. If Xiaomi and Apple were to release portless devices, the pressure would be on for the rest of the industry to go full unibody, and it’s hard to imagine the status quo would remain the status quo for very long.
This article is auto-generated by Algorithm Source: www.engadget.com
