Xiaomi today introduced its first quad-curved waterfall screen concept smartphone. The 88° hyper quad-curved screen design allows visual interfaces to flow over the phone’s surface like water. Almost the entire frame of the smartphone is covered by screen, while its body carries no ports or buttons, bringing forward the futuristic unibody no-port design.
Xiaomi never stops innovating, striving to find the best balance between imagination and reality. Pushing the limits of the classic smartphone form factor, Xiaomi engineers tried to make the smartphone as simple as possible and bring the “just a screen” form factor a step closer to life.
88° hyper quad-curved screen, revolution in manufacturing and bonding
Since flexible displays are part of the new normal, the biggest challenge in producing the industry’s first quad-curved waterfall screen was not in bending the display, but rather in manufacturing a 88° quad-curved glass panel and the 3D bonding process.
The 88° ultra quad-curved glass has virtually broken through the technological limits of glass production. Compared with ordinary curved glass, the difficulty of hot bending increases exponentially. Polishing a piece of such hyper-curved glass with a deep 88° bend on four sides requires self-developed glass processing equipment, hot bending under 800°C high temperature and pressure, four different polishing tools and up to more than ten complex polishing procedures. More importantly, behind such a piece of glass are thousands of attempts.
To attach such a piece of 88° quad-curved glass to a flexible display, an innovative screen stacking design was adopted through our breakthrough 3D bonding process. All of this ensures perfect and flawless screen performance.
Unibody no-port design, a new direction for future smartphones
The shape of the display is a crucial factor in determining the smartphone form of the future. With Xiaomi’s new breakthroughs in quad-curved waterfall displays, new possibilities are forged and critical advances are made towards the goal of a truly port-free unibody smartphone.
This revolutionary design ensures that almost all sides of the phone are covered by the display. Thanks to 46 self-developed patented technologies, physical ports and buttons can have their functions replicated by more elegant alternatives. Groundbreaking technologies and engineering solutions – including ultra-thin piezoelectric ceramics, an industry-first flexible film display acoustic technology, third-generation under-display cameras, wireless charging, eSIM chips, pressure-sensitive touch sensors, and more – are seamlessly integrated together, forming a visionary yet intuitive device.
