We’ve already seen the Xiaomi foldable phone after the company released a video of its CEO playing around with the concept device, but now we’ve been given another, 10-second sneak peek of this intriguing handset.
Unlike its foldable rivals – the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X – Xiaomi’s flexible device boasts two hinges.
Xiaomi has posted a fresh teaser video for its bifold Android device. Like the Huawei Mate X, Xiaomi’s open tablet has thin, regular bezels on all sides, and when it folds the screen wraps around the outside. The Xiaomi difference is that its foldable folds twice. So far, only Samsung’s Galaxy Fold promises a foldable phone with the display on the inside, with every other manufacturer preferring to put the display on the exterior. This sidesteps the thorny problem of creating a crease at the point of the device’s fold, but it also puts the screen in much more danger of getting scratched or otherwise tarnished.
This latest teaser from Xiaomi shows a fluid transition from tablet to smartphone mode, both in physical terms and in the animations on the screen. The video gives us the best sense yet of what the folded Xiaomi device will look like. When used as a phone, it appears quite wide, more so than the typically elongated smartphones of today, and it looks to be a fair bit thicker too.
Xiaomi hasn’t yet announced official details for its foldable phone, such as a firm release date and price.
