From The Verge: The biggest and most obvious trend in smartphones right now is the effort to eliminate the bezel, or frame, that surrounds a phone’s display. The goal is to create a feeling that you’re only holding a screen in your hand, and there’s nothing else to distract you from what’s being displayed on that screen. Established players (Samsung and LG) and newcomers (Essential) alike are all trying to reach that goal. Even Apple is expected to announce new iPhone that largely eliminates the border around the screen this week.
Xiaomi is also playing this game and it actually had a head start over much of the industry when it launched the Mi Mix last year. The Mi Mix was one of the first phones to come out with nary a bezel at all. Its enormous 6.44-inch screen was pushed to the very corners of the phone’s frame, and the entire design of the device was driven by this goal to eliminate the border entirely.
That drive forced Xiaomi to make some interesting design decisions, such as forgoing a standard earpiece for a fancy piezoelectric version and moving the front camera down to the lower right of the phone’s frame. Not all of these changes were good: the earpiece was far inferior to a standard speaker and despite the efforts to shrink the phone’s frame down, the Mi Mix’s enormous screen meant it was still a giant device. Xiaomi was likely aware of these issues when it labeled the phone as a “concept” device, even though it was available for purchase in the company’s home market of China.
Now Xiaomi has announced the Mi Mix 2, which rectifies some of the issues of the original and drops the concept tag. This new model is smaller and more approachable than the first Mix, and it will eventually be available everywhere Xiaomi sells phones (which, sadly, does not yet include the US). It will first be available in China, with prices ranging from from 3299 yuan (about $500) to 4699 yuan ($720).
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