Xiaomi launched a spectacular smartphone yesterday, the Mi Mix Alpha featuring a 360° surround display that features a 180% screen to body ratio. The phone is nothing like the smartphones we’ve ever seen before, making an all-screen design very close to reality. But we couldn’t help but notice that the Alpha is awfully similar to the foldable Xiaomi prototype that featured a double folding design. Now, Xiaomi’s co-founder, Lin Bin has revealed why there are some similarities between the two.
Lin Bin reveals that the Mi Mix Alpha and Xiaomi’s foldable that was teased earlier this year were developed in sync with each other. In fact, both the projects have been assigned internal codes in the same series. The two projects were developed simultaneously but the company could overcome the technical challenges associated with Mi Mix Alpha’s project recently which finally enabled them to carry out a small scale trial production.
This makes sense because the Mi Mix Alpha looks like a permanently folded version of the dual folding screen protoype revealed by Xiaomi back in March. Lin Bin’s comment also confirms that the company is still working on the dual folding design. We can’t say when Xiaomi will officially release the handset but given how it managed to bring the Mix Alpha concept to reality, the foldable phone may not be very far off.
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Still, both the Galaxy Fold and the Mate X foldable had to face numerous technical challenges before launch. The dual folding concept from Xiaomi looks really cool but it’s even more extreme than the single folding design used by both Samsung and Huawei’s foldable. So it remains to be seen if Xiaomi can bring the dual folding design to reality anytime soon.
The Galaxy Fold is already on sale in South Korea and goes on sale in the US next week, with a release expected on October 1 in India. Even the Mate X is finally going on sale in October, at least in China, confirms Huawei’s support. As the technology matures for mass production, we can expect to see better implementations of the foldable design in the coming years. And Xiaomi’s foldable could be one of those designs that make it compact and practical.
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