Mi MIX teardown: inside the bezel-less phone

The Xiaomi Mi MIX concept phone might not be heading to many consumer hands, but it’s an intriguing look at what might be in store for future smartphones. If you’ve been wondering what goes into producing this engineering marvel, then you’ll definitely want to check out this teardown of the Mi MIX.

Given that there aren’t any bezels to get a strong purchase on, the tinkers opened up the handset using a pair of suction cups to help separate the ceramic frame. The slight back panel clips off, revealing a thin connector trailing to the fingerprint scanner. Once inside, we can spot the large 4,300mAh battery taking up roughly half of the phone’s internal space. The other major components are all safely tucked away behind screwed down panels.

As well as looking incredibly slick, the 6.4-inch bezel-less display leaves plenty of room inside the phone for components. There’s plenty of space to house the processor, PMIC, memory, and camera components inside the handset on the large square mainboard. We’ve certainly seen more compact looking boards in handsets of a similar size. The main IC components are also tucked away beneath metal housings, presumably to help transfer heat away and maybe offer from RF shielding.

While we already knew that the handset comes equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and a USB Type-C port, and the teardown reveals who manufactures a few of the Mi MIX’s other components too. SK Hynix is providing the memory chip, COMPEQ manufactured the mainboard, the rear camera seems to have been produced by Chinese manufacturer Shenzhen O-film, there’s a familiar Qualcomm PM8996 PMIC on board, and a SMB1351 battery charging IC that support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology.

Unfortunately the teardown doesn’t provide a closer look at the makeup of that 2048 x 1080 resolution bezel-less display. Even so for what’s mostly a proof of concept, the Xiaomi Mi MIX looks very well put together. Let’s hope a successor heads to more markets in the not too distant future.