Xiaomi showcases its first concept smartphone with waterfall display that curves on all sides

The 88-degree hyper quad-curved screen design has the screen flowing over the phone’s surface like water, thus creating the “waterfall” effect.

Almost the entire frame of the smartphone is covered by the screen and the body of the device has no ports or buttons. (Xiaomi)

Xiaomi showcased its first concept smartphone with quad-curved, waterfall display. The smartphone essentially sports a display that curves on all sides. The 88-degree hyper quad-curved screen design has the screen flowing over the phone's surface like water, thus creating the “waterfall” effect.

Almost the entire frame of the smartphone is covered by the screen and the body of the device has no ports or buttons. You can see the familiar back with a camera module in the video, but the whole smartphone has no other discerning edges and ends. 

Xiaomi explained in its press release that the biggest challenge in producing a smartphone like this was in trying to make sure the curved waterfall display does not bend and manufacture a 88-degree quad-curved glass panel with a 3D bonding process instead.

You've seen the #QuadCurvedWaterfallDisplay concept smartphone, but how does it actually work? Read all about it here! #InnovationForEveryone

— Xiaomi (@Xiaomi) February 5, 2021

“Compared with ordinary curved glass, the difficulty of hot bending increases exponentially. Polishing a piece of such hyper-curved glass with a deep 88-degree bend on four sides requires self-developed glass processing equipment, hot bending under high temperature (800 degrees centigrade) and pressure, four different polishing tools and up to more than ten complex polishing procedures,” the company said. Most importantly, Xiaomi added, creating one piece of such a glass meant thousands of attempts.

To attach this curved glass to a flexible display, Xiaomi adopted an innovative screen stacking design through the 3D bonding process.

Since the smartphone has no ports or buttons, all of the functions have been replaced by more “elegant alternatives” like ultra-thin piezoelectric ceramics, flexible film display acoustic technology, third-generation under-display cameras, wireless charging (like charging via air waves that the company also recently showcased), eSIM chips, pressure-sensitive touch sensors etc.

This is one of Xiaomi's concept smartphones so this means that we might not ever see this exact device hitting the stores. Many of its features might be adopted in future smartphones made by the company though.