Foldable smartphones are a thing now, both Samsung and Huawei had introduced their offerings in February, and Xiaomi’s foldable smartphone prototype has just appeared in yet another video.
This video popped up on the company’s official Weibo (Chinese social media network) page (reuploaded on YouTube), and it is very short, only 10 seconds long. In this video, you can see someone operate the company’s foldable demo smartphone, and then folding it, and placing it on some sort of a plastic cup.
This actually seems to be the same phone that the company’s co-founder, Lin Bin, demoed earlier this year. As you can see, the phone sports really thin bezels, and it folds in two places, so that the majority of the back side ends up being covered by the display. Once folded, approximately two-thirds of the phone’s display (a bit less) will power down, and the middle part will start acting as the main display.
When folded, the vast majority of this phone ends up being surrounded by the display, and it is worth noting, once again, that this is just a demo device. The company’s final product will probably look different, but considering that we’ve seen this very same folding mechanism several times now, chances are that the final product will fold in the very same way.
We can’t really see any cameras on the front side of this device, so it remains to be seen how will Xiaomi resolve that problem. Also, we don’t really get to see the back side of the device, but the whole back side of the phone ends up being covered by parts of the front side when the device is folded, which means that the camera also ends up being covered, if it is located back there. We’re really wondering what will Xiaomi do here in terms of cameras, both front, and rear-facing ones.
We still do not know when will this smartphone become official, but it is definitely expected to arrive at some point this year. Sources are suggesting that it may arrive soon due to the fact Xiaomi released yet another teaser video, but the company may be doing that just to hype up the phone, regardless of whether it plans to announce it soon or not.
Xiaomi’s exec actually requested users to suggest a name for the company’s foldable smartphone via social media a while back, and we’ve seen various suggestions sent his way. At this point, the most probable name for the phone seems to be the “Mi Fold”, but it remains to be seen if that is accurate or not.
The company’s first foldable smartphone will be a high-end device, of course, and it is expected to ship with the Snapdragon 855 64-bit octa-core processor. The phone’s flexible display is co-developed by Xiaomi and Visinox, and the phone is expected to cost around $1,000, half as much as the Galaxy Fold. The phone will ship with MIUI, but the UI will be adapted for foldable devices, of course. That skin will probably be installed on top of Android 9 Pie, and the device is also expected to include a rather large battery.