Xiaomi"s Mi MIX lineup has been the company"s way to push the envelope in terms of smartphone design. The original Mi MIX was one of the first near-bezelless phones on the market, and that concept has been improved upon by its successors. Now, after some teasing, the company is taking things one step further with the Mi MIX Alpha.
The Xiaomi Mi MIX Alpha is a concept phone, and Xiaomi calls it the imagination for the future of phones in the 5G era. The device has a display that wraps all the way around to the back of the phone, only excluding a single horizontal strip along the camera housing. By traditional methods of measurement, the Mi MIX Alpha has a screen-to-body ratio of 180.6%, though that might not be a very accurate method given the nature of the device. There"s no information regarding the specs of that display, but it"s interesting for the form factor alone.
That"s not all that"s impressive with this phone. The camera on the back is the world"s first 108MP smartphone camera sensor, with a 1/1.33-inch sensor that"s 389% larger than the 48MP camera we see on many smartphones today. It can take pictures at the full 108MP (12032x9024), but it can also combine four pixels into one to form 1.6μm pixels for low-light shots.
In addition to the main camera, there"s a 20MP wide-angle lens that supports macro photography and 12MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom and dual phase-detection focus.
As for the rest of the specs, it"s what you"d expect from a flagship - a Snapdragon 855+ with 5G support, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of UFS 3.0 storage, and a 4,050mAh battery that supports 40W fast charging. Where there isn"t screen, the phone is made out of ceramic and titanium, which hopefully helps with durability.
The phone is planned for small-scale production in December and it"ll cost ¥19,990 in China, which is roughly $2813.86. It"s unlikely we"ll see it outside of China, but there"s always a chance.