Xiaomi Mi Mix

[Mariner]

Something a bit different to the usual design, I suppose:

http://en.miui.com/thread-392623-1-1.html

Looks nice, but still too flipping big for my preferences! Yes, I'm aware it's of similar dimensions to the iPhone 7 Plus.

Will be interesting to see if some of this tech a) works and b) will find its way into smaller devices.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Reminds me of some older Sharp phones.
If it's robust, it's a great accomplishment in design. Though they need to be careful to avoid missed touches on the sides.

 

[Lazy8s]

Delivering significantly more display in a workable size like that is the improvement to form factor that phones have been needing for a while. There's still enough bezel, when used in combination with refined software for accidental touch rejection, to keep the interface working acceptably.

 

[RedVi]

I'm all for this move, we seem to have been going backwards in this regard since 2014 for some reason (battery?).

I still question the reason for not having a top bezel at all. Since I like normal sized phones (4.7-5.2"), a simple 10mm top and bottom bezel and 2mm per side bezel would suit me fine. I'm all for on screen buttons, even without extending the screen aspect like this phone has done (17:9). I find it too hard to use modern 5"+ phones one handed when they have buttons below the screen, eg. my current Galaxy S5.

Right now I'm at a point where I can only consider Google, Huawei, LG and Sony for my next phones. Sony and LG have failed on screen to body ratio recently, as have Google. I'd love to see more companies emphasize it in medium sized phones (~5"), even for just one model if it must be at the expense of battery life. I might be an outlier here, but I don't currently need more battery life on my phone because a) it's already good enough for my needs, and b) my phones poor ergonomics deter me from wanting to use it any more than I do.

 

[orangpelupa]

Sharp did it in their aquos phones. Expensive tho.

Surely this is good news for bringing that Kind of design to the masses. Xiaomi phone always cheap

 

[fehu]

Sharp's was more a thech demo to attract customers like xiaomi

 

[fehu]

Since I like normal sized phones (4.7-5.2"), a simple 10mm top and bottom bezel and 2mm per side bezel would suit me fine.

This!
I have a p8 lite and is the best form factor until now, so much that I would upgrade but can't find anything as comfortable

 

[Moused]

It's quite nice phone, nice disign but a bit expensive

 

[Mariner]

One thing I've heard about the Mi Mix is that if you drop it, it's pretty much guaranteed you'll smash the screen.

I suppose a case might save it, but the whole point of a decvice which looks this slick is that you don't want to use a case.

Not quite sure how any manufacturer will get around the fragility of screens if you've got edge to edge displays, especially if they go right up to the top corners of the device as well.

 

[orangpelupa]

One thing I've heard about the Mi Mix is that if you drop it, it's pretty much guaranteed you'll smash the screen.

I suppose a case might save it, but the whole point of a decvice which looks this slick is that you don't want to use a case.

Not quite sure how any manufacturer will get around the fragility of screens if you've got edge to edge displays, especially if they go right up to the top corners of the device as well.

thats what i dont understant how could that happen. In normal non-edge-to-edge screened phone, the screen glass is already edge-to-edge.

i guess xiaomi cheaped out on the outer rim? phones usually have veeeeeeeeeeeery thin outer rim on its screen glass edges.

 

[milk]

MAKE THE SCREEN BIGGER! MAKE THE PHONE SMALLER! those aren't necessarily creative ideas. The thing I don't like about these ever decreasing borders around modern phones and tablets is that it doesn't work as well in practice when the entire screen is a touch-sensitive imput system. Bevels are good. The iPad, for example, went backwards, in my opinion, when it reduced the safe area that allowed to have a good healthy grip of it. This stuff looks sleek and futuristic, but it's childishly unpractical in the real world in my opinion.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

MAKE THE SCREEN BIGGER! MAKE THE PHONE SMALLER! those aren't necessarily creative ideas. The thing I don't like about these ever decreasing borders around modern phones and tablets is that it doesn't work as well in practice when the entire screen is a touch-sensitive imput system. Bevels are good. The iPad, for example, went backwards, in my opinion, when it reduced the safe area that allowed to have a good healthy grip of it. This stuff looks sleek and futuristic, but it's childishly unpractical in the real world in my opinion.

Or you can just tweak the UX to be more selective in the way it acts upon touches detected on the screen edges.

IMO it's quite a bit backwards to impose a hardware limit because of something that can so easily be worked around through software (i.e. if portrait mode is active, acceptable input ranges from x0+margin to xmax-margin).
Just because the touch matrix won't respond along the edges, it doesn't mean that screen area can't be used for e.g. reading more and/or larger text.

Bezels are an unnecessary evil. The user doesn't really needs them, and if engineers can get rid of them while maintaining sufficient mechanical robustness, then all the better.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Does the OS allow to arbitrarily shrink an "app"'s display to leave safe space on the sides? (at worst, displaying black or a color computed on the fly for the border area). Does it allow to shrink only the input range? A combination of both, automatically choosen when you're launching a particular "app"?

If not, you've got something that works in theory but doesn't actually exist, so using the product will suck.

In theory, my computer is the best I ever had, in practice it sucks because it doesn't run program X or game Y..
In theory, you can safely browse the internet on your smartphone, all they have to do is provide monthly or day one security updates for the browser and OS.

 

[orangpelupa]

MAKE THE SCREEN BIGGER! MAKE THE PHONE SMALLER! those aren't necessarily creative ideas. The thing I don't like about these ever decreasing borders around modern phones and tablets is that it doesn't work as well in practice when the entire screen is a touch-sensitive imput system. Bevels are good. The iPad, for example, went backwards, in my opinion, when it reduced the safe area that allowed to have a good healthy grip of it. This stuff looks sleek and futuristic, but it's childishly unpractical in the real world in my opinion.

Can't they just adopt and develop from "palm rejection" that TouchPad has done since eons ago?

So it knows whether it's a finger or not that is touching. Not a finger, touch not registered.

Heck, touch screen already supports 10 or more touching points simultaneously right?

So a bunch of greasy palm touching its sides while fingers touching the UI elements should be still below the limit

 

[milk]

Can't they just adopt and develop from "palm rejection" that TouchPad has done since eons ago?

So it knows whether it's a finger or not that is touching. Not a finger, touch not registered.

Heck, touch screen already supports 10 or more touching points simultaneously right?

So a bunch of greasy palm touching its sides while fingers touching the UI elements should be still below the limit

Will the OS software AND all apps support that feature by the time of release? Without breaking any of the swipe-from-the-top/bottom/left/right gestures or making any buttons too close to the edge unusable? Unless that happens, my case stands.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Does the OS allow to arbitrarily shrink an "app"'s display to leave safe space on the sides? (at worst, displaying black or a color computed on the fly for the border area). Does it allow to shrink only the input range? A combination of both, automatically choosen when you're launching a particular "app"?

Will the OS software AND all apps support that feature by the time of release? Without breaking any of the swipe-from-the-top/bottom/left/right gestures or making any buttons too close to the edge unusable? Unless that happens, my case stands.

You're mixing poor products / poor implementation with advocating for halting good engineering, productivity and ergonomics because of said poor products/implementations.
milk's statement was Bezels are good. They're not. They're a limitation imposed by technology constraints.
Of course that reducing such constraints must come with user interface adjustments that were previously not required, or you're going to end up with a bad product (I have no idea how the Mi Mix handles this BTW).



Saying bezels are good because product A doesn't work well with small bezels is practically the same as back in 2008 saying low-DPI screens are better because the Windows 7 UI scaler didn't work right.
Thank goodness that line of thought didn't win over the market.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Well said, in that I will be quick to disparage 1080p 13" and 15" laptops. I'd rather see cheap 1440x900 13.3" laptops and 1600x900 15.6" laptops (the latter existed at slightly expensive price point and don't anymore)

But yes I can understand how that can be fallacious, just some of us lose patience for "it will get better later", phones are also where you want it to work now for practical reasons (you don't have much control on the experience, and there's the risk it will ever work the same as on day one)

 

[orangpelupa]

Will the OS software AND all apps support that feature by the time of release? Without breaking any of the swipe-from-the-top/bottom/left/right gestures or making any buttons too close to the edge unusable? Unless that happens, my case stands.

Whoa, for buttons to close to edge, Google already have a design guidelines that discourage that kind of design right?

Anyway, this is android. There is zero chance that everything will work fine.

Something will break and that's normal. It's been like that since eons ago for various android flavors.

Sure it's not good. But it's normal thing for android.

 

[milk]

I like your comparison with the cultural inertia that kept high-dpi monitors from popularizing earlier because OS's GUI were taking too long to become resolution independent. You do have a point there.
With that said, I still see little real-world utility for tiny bezels on mobile devices for 90% of their use time, which is with them in your hand. You can't have buttons there because you need a safe area for a reasonable grip. You can't have relevant content either because it could be obscured. At that point, you are going through a lot of technological effort and cost, for little to no benefit outside of a futuristic gimmick.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

From GSMArena's review of the Galaxy S8+:

All things considered, the only problem we really had with the S8+, while using it as a gaming platform had to do with ergonomics, rather than performance. In its quest to abolish bezels, Samsung has left a pretty limited area for you to rest your fingers on when holding the phone horizontally. To mitigate this, the OS offers a special edge touch rejection while in game. It works pretty well and only leaves the user with the task to overcome any residual tendency to shy away from gripping the screen.

Once you get used to relying on that, and potentially master a shuffling vertical grip that is comfortable enough, you should have all it takes to fully leverage the powerhouse performance of the S8+ for any and all tasks. And for the non-gamers out there, it only takes a few stabs at spanning two split-screen apps over the screen to never want to go back.