Check out how Oppo's phone with a wrap-around display could have looked like

Back in 2019, Xiaomi released the wrapped display Mi Mix Alpha with an insane price tag of almost $3,000. It was a visually striking phone, but did it add meaningful functionality beyond just looking pretty and costing a lot?

In more recent times we've seen plenty of patents on phones with wrap-around screens from the likes of Samsung, LG and others, suggesting that many of our favorite brands have considered the idea.

And even now in 2021, a new patent by one of the world's top phone makers, Oppo, has surfaced, showing us a phone with a display that wraps around from its front to the backside.

Patent and renders tell the story of what could have been

Thanks to the discovery of an Oppo patent (via LetsGoDigital) that was recently approved by the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), and the following gorgeous renders courtesy of Concept Creator, we can see what Oppo's vision of such a phone is. The following renders are based on the official patent images.



The phone is shown to feature flat edges, with its display covering most of its surface, and generally a strikingly beautiful, sleek and modern design. Similar to the Huawei Mate Xs folding phone, Oppo's all-display phone has one small, narrow area where parts like its quad cameras and flash are all arranged vertically.

Speaking of cameras, the great thing about such a phone is that its main camera also doubles as a selfie camera, meaning potentially superior selfies than from the average phone.

This is not the future we're getting

But indeed, it's worth nothing that despite being approved just last month, Oppo filed the patent for this phone all the way back in late October of 2019. So it's safe to say that this is a glimpse of what could have been, and not so much something that we can expect from the company in 2021.

Currently the only new smartphone form factor that seems to be getting increasingly sought after and we're likely to see more of is the folding phone one.