Check out this crazy Xiaomi phone with a vertically sliding display (3D renders)

Yet another extravagant Xiaomi smartphone patent has surfaced (via LetsGoDigital), this one published in late October of 2020 by the United States Patent Application Publication. The patent shows a smartphone with a vertically sliding display, which also wraps around the phone itself and covers some of its back side. To get a better idea of what a phone like this could look like, we have 3D renders, courtesy of Yanko Design.


The main purpose of the sliding display appears to be for it to hide the front-facing cameras, leaving the user with a truly bezel-less phone. According to the patent, the user will be able to voice-command the phone to get the display moving, in addition to using touch controls. Thanks to the screen being positioned with magnets, the phone should snap to either open or closed positions, with no in-betweens.


As mentioned earlier, this sliding main display wraps around the back of the phone. In the patent, it's shown to cover almost the entire back side, leaving just enough space for a main camera module. A second variant in the patent describes a similar concept, but with a screen that slides sideways, instead of vertically, again wrapping around the phone and covering some of its back side.

As Xiaomi is among the top phone manufacturers in the world, seeing the Chinese giant experiment with unusual design ideas like that shouldn't come as a surprise. Recently we saw what appeared to be an actual working large Xiaomi folding phone in the wild, or possibly a tablet, after years of other patents by the company suggesting that it is trying to work out what its folding smartphone design should be like. We've also seen Xiaomi considering other ways to hide smartphone cameras, including implementing dual popup camera modules.

In related news, Xiaomi recently got blacklisted by the U.S. administration, joining the likes of Huawei, which leaves the Chinese company's future on the American market uncertain.