It seems like Xiaomi is developing a phone that both slides and rolls. This is indicated in a new design patent that the company submitted with the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Office) and the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office). The images provided in the article have been created by Sarang Sheth, based on the provided information from the patent.
New Xiaomi design patent shows a phone that both slides & rolls
This design patent got published on October 29 last year, though it’s only now making the rounds. It shows us a phone with a large retractable slide display. This display covers the whole front of the phone, and it goes over the bottom, to the back side of the device.
The display also covers the vast majority of the phone’s back side, as you can see in the images. This makes for a rather interesting-looking smartphone, which both slides and rolls, as it uses a roller mechanism on the inside.
The flexible display can slide 2 centimeters down, from the front. Once you slide it down a bit, the front camera setup becomes available, which is quite interesting. At the same time, the device gets longer at the bottom, as it makes room for the flexible display.
Its entire display moves on a slider rail
The whole display moves on a slider rail, which is fitted in the bottom half of the housing. What’s also interesting is that this slide display can be operated in more than one way.
You can tap the screen in order to get the display to move. On top of that, you can also use voice commands to do so, which is explained in the attached documentation with this patent.
The phone includes a distance sensor, and the dot projector as well. The screen itself is fixed into place by two electromagnets. Now, this smartphone design looks extremely futuristic, and it remains to be seen if it will become a reality.
Xiaomi tends to patent quite a few designs, and this is one of the weirdest we’ve seen thus far. The company is not a stranger to trying out new things, like it did with the Mi MIX series. So, who knows, something like this may actually become a reality at some point.
