The Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Xiaomi has shown off a number of highly resilient mobile phone models in the past, some of which have been pure concept models. Now they have launched a new mobile on the market that also offers unusual features.
Xiaomi Mix 4 was recently unveiled at a major launch event in the home country, and it comes with something we do not often see in the mobile world – namely a front camera that is located below the screen.
Many patents
The solution is called CUP (camera under panel) and according to the manufacturer will be the result of five years of research and development and dozens of different patents.
To develop its CUP solution, Xiaomi has put a large team of engineers on the case and, among other things, come up with a new circuit design – something they call “transparent sub-pixel circuits” – in the touch screen.
That solution should minimize light diffraction, so that the camera captures enough light even when it is under the screen, and ensure sufficient transparency. A lot is also being done on the software side to make the concept work, says Xiaomi, but not all the technical details have been revealed.
The manufacturer insists that the front camera, which is invisible to the naked eye, matches common solutions when it comes to color and detail. Exactly how it performs, of course, remains to be seen.
Very few mobiles have so far placed the front camera behind the screen, at least among mobiles that have actually been launched on the market. One of the models that offers the feature is Samsung’s recently unveiled Galaxy Z Fold 3, as Digi.no just mentioned. In addition, we find the concept of the ZTE model Axon 20 5G, while Oppo and a couple of others have shown the solution to concept models.
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Ceramic shell and solid camera on the back
The other notable feature of Mix 4 is that it uses a ceramic wrap, similar to its predecessor Mix 3. Where Mix 3 only had a ceramic back, however, Mix 4 has a ceramic unibody design, with a new type of ceramic material that reduces weight by 30 percent.
Otherwise, the phone offers quite solid hardware. It is among the first to feature the Snapdragon 888 Plus chip under the hood, and it has up to 12 GB of memory and up to 512 GB of storage.
The screen is 6.67 inches with a resolution of 2400 × 1080 pixels.
The camera on the back is also quite well equipped. The mobile uses a triple camera solution consisting of a main camera of 108 megapixels, an ultra-wide angle camera of 13 megapixels and a viewing angle of 120 degrees, as well as a periscope camera with 8 megapixels, 5X optical zoom and 50x digital zoom.
Xiaomi Mix 4 will be released in China at a starting price of 5,000 yuan, which is equivalent to just under 7,000 Norwegian kroner. It is still unknown if or when it will be launched in this country.
