What a screen and what a camera！

Despite its almost halved market cap in Hong Kong, Xiaomi launched another eye catching smartphone "Mi Mix Alpha" with a wrap-around screen design, a 108 megapixel camera and, of course, support for 5G.

The 7.92-inch screen covers almost everywhere on the front of the phone and goes around to cover most of the back, leaving only a strip of ceramics for camera set and Mix logo.

The main camera has more than 108 million pixels, which is about 3.27 times the size of the 8K television standard.

The company said they "always want to be the coolest company" for the fans. And that's why they created this uncommon phone.

Xiaomi's race for all-screen phone and large camera pixel number has gone to the extreme. But do buyers still care about this?

We searched on Twitter for comments on the phone. About one third of comments we found do not favor the screen design because it looks much easier to break after falling than other all-screen designs.

And a lot of commentators questioned if the design is very useful.

According to screenshots on Xiaomi's website, the back side part of the screen will be used to display a feed similar to Google Discover that keeps user informed about recent and incoming activities on the phone.

But that used to be available on the "minus one screen" that appears when users swipe left on the home screen.

We at CGTN Digital also found a potential problem with the screen: Since this screen is very much like the ones on foldable phones, the screen cover may also be made of soft plastic instead of solid glass. Samsung and Huawei have both delayed their launch of foldable phones partly because of this. How will Xiaomi solve this problem?

Xiaomi didn't disclose the material used for the screen cover at the moment.

The Mix series is Xiaomi's high-end product line in addition to its traditional, value-for-money lines. The Chinese phonemaker often use unique designs in this series to tell the world they are not only capable of making cheap phones.

On the original Mix phone, Xiaomi reintroduced the concept of all-screen phone based on Sharp's Aquos design back in late 2016. Xiaomi is practically one of the first phonemakers to produce a practical all-screen phone. The all-screen design is now an industry common that's used by international brands like Apple, Samsung and local competitors like Huawei, Vivo and Oppo.

The Mix 3 brought back the classical slide design to achieve almost 100 percent screen ratio. But the design didn't last.

Xiaomi plans to start selling the Mix Alpha in December with a limited supply. The initial price will be 19,999 RMB, which is about 2,800 USD.

The company also revealed its new flagship Mi 9 Pro 5G and an update to its Android variation MIUI 11.