We all recognize Chinese tech behemoth Xiaomi for their classy budget smartphone offerings, smarthome products and accessories, but it is now going a step further to work on something completely different. However, one could also easily say that they’re yet again following in the footsteps of other smartphone giants — Samsung, Lenovo or LG.
Alongside rumors of Mi Note 2 sporting a curved AMOLED display launching next week, a video clip showing off a flexible touch display have already started surfacing the interwebs. This 35-second video was uploaded on Chinese video streaming platform Youku and shows off a bendable touchscreen running MIUI 8 — Xiaomi’s forked version of Android.
In the video attached underneath, one can easily see the user using a real prototype of a flexible display which is bent in his hand. This is most likely not a gimicky photoshop render, and shows the user power up the Settings app and a game to demonstrate the display. The user might have demonstrated that the display is really bendable but didn’t give us a glimpse at the flexibility of the same — held it fixed, bent in the hand.
The rumor mill is currently going gaga over this flexible display video leak, and suggesting that it could feature in the upcoming Mi Note 2 device expected to launch on October 25th. But, we would recommend you to not get your hopes up very high and wait for a confirmation from Xiaomi themselves. Even if the display doesn’t feature in Mi Note 2, we know that the Chinese giant is working on flexible displays and they’ll come packed in a smartphone very soon.
The hype around bendable displays was started by Samsung when they displayed their Youm technology at CES in 2013. The Korean giant might need to do some damage control for the Galaxy Note 7, but is expected to launch two finished bendable OLED screens in 2017. One of these would fold in half while the other would have a 5-inch panel that unfurls further into a 8-inch tablet panel.
