Xiaomi’s new concept phone has a waterfall display on all four edges

Xiaomi has announced its latest phone concept: a “quad-curved waterfall display.” This means that the unnamed phone’s screen not only has deep 88-degree “waterfall” curves on the left and right sides, but on the top and bottom as well, leaving no room for ports or buttons. Xiaomi says this is intended to “extend the limits of the display to infinity” and enable “a true, port-free unibody design.”

The obvious question is how that could possibly work at the screen’s corners, and based on the promotional imagery it looks like Xiaomi is simply leaving them blank with small, rounded cutouts. Not quite infinity, then, but still a neat trick — although for people who already don’t like the comparatively modest curved displays on phones like the Galaxy S21 Ultra, this sounds like their nightmare.

Announcing a concept device entirely through renders doesn’t quite have the impact of showing it off in person, as was common pre-COVID. A Xiaomi representative tells The Verge that this phone does actually exist and that they’ve used it themselves, for what that’s worth. The display is the result of “countless breakthroughs in glass bending and laminating technology,” according to Xiaomi, and “represents the sum of 46 groundbreaking patents.”

This concept phone follows last week’s announcement of seemingly outlandish Xiaomi tech, its “Mi Air Charge” truly wireless charging system. And back in 2019, Xiaomi revealed the Mi Mix Alpha phone, which featured a display that wrapped around almost the entire device, though it ultimately never went on sale. This latest concept may well never make it into a commercially available device.

Xiaomi will announce global availability for its considerably more conventional Mi 11 flagship phone at an event next Monday, February 8th.