Next year, Apple will come out with an iPhone design that will be unlike any iPhone the company made to date. That is if current reports are accurate. The iPhone 8 should have an all-screen design, complete with a virtual home button that will replace the iconic physical home button, and an OLED screen. The display may be curved, in which case the side buttons could also disappear. Some people expect Apple to move from metal to ceramic for the phone’s exterior shell, although Apple surely can’t manufacture ceramic cases to meet actual iPhone demand. Moreover, the wildest iPhone 8 rumor yet says Apple will launch a clear all-screen iPhone next year.
But until that happens, there’s already a company that came out with a smartphone concept that looks very much like an iPhone 8 prequel, one that you’ll be able to buy in November for just over $500.
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Xiaomi on Tuesday introduced the Mi Mix smartphone in the image above. It’s got a bezel-less display, and the 6.4-inch screen occupies 91.3% of the front side of the phone.
The front-facing camera has been relocated to the bottom bezel, but you’ll be able to rotate the phone to take regular selfies. The proximity sensor has been replaced by ultrasound, The Verge reports, and the front speaker was swapped for a piezoelectric speaker that uses the metal frame to generate sound.
The back of the phone and the side buttons are al made of ceramic.
The innards of the phone are equally impressive. We’re looking at a Snapdragon 821 chipset paired with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage — that’s what you’ll find inside Google’s Pixels as well. The phone also has a 16-megapixel rear camera, headphone jack, fingerprint sensor on the back, 192Hz / 24-bit DAC chip, dual-SIM support, and a 4,400 mAh battery.
The base configuration costs around $516 and ships on November 4th. For $590, you’ll get 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. However, it’s unlikely that Xiaomi will have enough units to go around. After all, this is labeled as a concept phone by Xiaomi. The company probably wanted the “world’s first” title real bad.
https://twitter.com/hbarra/status/790829329756200961
An official presentation and a hands-on video with the Mi Mix follow below.
