The Xiaomi Mi Mix is a pretty exciting smartphone. The most obvious thing about it is its near bezel-less display, which is curved around the corners to give the effect that the entire front of the phone is a display. It turns out that the display isn’t the only cool feature, though — the phone also features what Xiaomi is calling “Inner Beauty,” which basically replaces the device’s proximity sensor with ultrasound software. This technology was produced by a company called Elliptic Labs.
This means a few things for the phone — first of all, it means that the device’s speaker can be totally invisible, allowing for the screen to extend to where the speaker would otherwise be. It also means that instead of a proximity sensor, the device uses algorithms to detect when there’s an object near the phone so that it can, for example, switch off the screen while you’re taking a call so that your ear doesn’t trigger any phone activities while you’re on the phone.
Along with the proximity sensor being out of the picture, the problems associated with proximity sensors are also gone, according to Xiaomi. For example, proximity sensors can sometimes run into issues in bad weather conditions, or when the user has dark skin or hair.
You might be wondering where the front facing camera fits in with all of this — the company actually had to move the front-facing camera to the bottom of the device, marking another change for the traditional smartphone design.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Mi Mix will primarily be sold in China, and at this point it doesn’t seem as though the phone will ever reach the U.S. It’s safe to say, however, that if the phone is a major success, we could eventually see devices with a similar design make their way to North America. Apart from the huge display, the phone features an impressive 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage — all for the equivalent of $515.
