The Quad Waterfall Display Concept phone from Xiaomi
Xiaomi, the Chinese giant in electronic devices. Be it smartphones, televisions, air purifiers, you name it, chances are they surely make it. All this is not done overnight though, they have some amazing hardworking people who are constantly trying to create new ground-breaking technologies. This time they have come up with a visual beauty (again, because if you remember the Mi MIX Alpha, then you guys know what they can do next). They have showcased this new concept phone which is having “quad-curved waterfall display” as they name it, and yes you understand it. Here they have the display on the top where it should be obviously, and on all the four edges, YES! curved display all over.
According to the company’s blogpost, with the rise of flexible display manufacturing, getting it from third party is definitely not an issue, but, “manufacturing a 88o quad-curved glass panel” and making it bond with the display beneath was the most challenging part. But as we mention they have some amazing people to do such work, and to make the shape correctly especially with so many layers in the glass needed special equipment, which they developed, hence doing it in-house, with 800-degree heat, various tools to polish, and most importantly number of attempts, to be honest, thousands.
We all know, with some great prototypes, comes some limitations. As prototypes are the creations of makers thoughts, but putting them to mass production is not that simple, and sometimes, don’t even achieve the 100% of the things as suggested by the new features it promise. The same is here in this case, as Xiaomi says it is the all glass as shown in the demo video too, but, the video and the renders of the product are made in such a way that hide the flaws in this, and yes, it has flaws, THE CORNERS, it has cut-outs on all the 4 corners and not the screen, otherwise the Chinese giant would have successfully achieved the “all-glass look” they were aiming for.
And its not just the display here, which is a clever implementation, there are NO PORTS here. They have not included any traditional port. They have betted this on their 46 patents and implemented here features like pressure-sensitive touch sensors in place of physical buttons. Well, it don’t even have the traditional speakers, but have “industry-first flexible film display acoustic technology” that means it’s going to generate sound with the screen itself. There is no port to charge as well, and its alternative is quite easy to guess, i.e wireless charging, and is also expected to work with the other newly announced technology called by Xiaomi as “Mi Air Charge”
To summarize, all these developments can be considered as a proof that Xiaomi is working hard toward creating a true unibody port-less smartphone and no when knows how early they will be able to achieve it. Having said that, they are not the only ones in the industry to work in that directions, even Apple is heard to be working towards this, and maybe soon we can witness the iPhones line-up going port-less, well with only lightning port to remove now as they have already removed the 3.5 mm audio jack in the past, and shift to only wireless charging. If Apple and Xiaomi do bring in such unibody devices, then the pressure will definitely be on the other manufacturers around the world to achieve that. And as rightly said, the status symbol today may not be the status symbol tomorrow.
