I’ve always liked Chinese brands and they all seems to be working hard now to overtake other already established mainstream brands like Apple or Samsung. The new Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha is one of a kind with an overtly pushed boundary.

Not long ago, Vivo Nex 3 was a great thing as the Waterfall display trend is just setting foot on the planet just as we saw it on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro but then an entirely new design which took the whole screen design to another level entirely.

The “Surround Screen” as they call it wraps itself all around the four dimensions of the Mi Mix Alpha smartphone leaving only the camera area out. This gives the device a whooping 180 degree screen-to-body ration.

So with all these excess screens, you have more rooms to display things like the battery and notification icons which usually reside at the top of smartphones now gets moved to the sides of the device. Pressure sensitive volume buttons notchless, bezelless all makes the device outstanding and unique.

The Mi Mix Alpha utilizes the Samsung’s new 108MP camera sensor which Xiaomi also co-developed. As with other recent high-resolution Samsung sensors, pixels are combined into 2×2 squares for better light sensitivity in low light, which in this case will produce 27-megapixel images.

Not being opportune to handle this amazing piece of technology but it’s definitely going to raise eyebrows whenever you are holding it. It’s truly futuristic. The screens all around the device serves a lot of purposes. For example, the back camera can be turned around to be used for seflie.

As for the phone’s more traditional specs, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor, 5G connectivity, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, 40W wired fast-charging, and a 4,050mAh battery. That last spec would perhaps suggest that Xiaomi doesn’t imagine you having the whole screen turned on all the time.

Meanwhile, this is still a concept smartphone according to Xiaomi and it’s not going to be a mass product at least not even soon even if it would be. The phone will go into small-scale production this year and go on sale in December for 19,999 yuan, or about $2,800. The original Mi Mix was also given the “concept” label and released in small quantities, with the Mi Mix 2 following a year later as a more mainstream device.

On one hand, this design poses obvious issues with cost, durability, battery life, accidental touch recognition, privacy, and so on. On the other, well, just look at it: