In a technological landscape that demands new innovation, the phone market has been left hanging. With flips and folds, and the presence of a full edge-to-edge screen, the scarce improvements have been minute. However, straying from these paths that America has paved, there is China. China’s major phone companies like Huawei and Xiaomi have been making small but steady improvements. In 2024, Huawei came out with the Huawei Mate XT, which had not one fold but two folds for a larger screen and more size creativity. This is similar, in form of small increments, to Xiaomi’s latest which has a screen on the camera bump.

Once there were phones from companies such as the Palm Pilot models (from Palm Inc.) and BlackBerry Curve (from BlackBerry). These were the golden standard for phones in 2005. Their reign ended in 2006 with the arrival of the iPhone. The iPhone had killed these models with one major feature, the erasure of the keyboard. The iPhone beat out these models with an edge-to-edge screen. This was a major improvement and blew these other options out of the water. Apple followed this up with the Macbooks, Airpods, iPads, and more and more form-reducing innovation. But as of late, particularly with Apple this has slowed to a crawl towards slimness. I have literally never heard of any person, except for professional reviewers, that prefers a slimmer phone than the base model iPhones. However, I hear plenty of people who want more battery. Also, everyone is using a case, so it would make more sense for Apple to focus on more durable phones, as that would look better than a phone with a case, be cheaper than buying cases (because of economies of scale), and would be a major selling point. Instead, Apple is replacing the titanium with aluminum.

The modern market for phones as a whole is currently taking a very slow process, and this is voiced by critics all around the world. Most phones around the planet have adopted a model with using edge-to-edge touchscreens, and front and back cameras and adopting buttons on the bevels. Does this remind you of anything?

Xiaomi and the Chinese phone industry as a whole have been slowly breaking through this market creativity plateau. While this 17 lineup has merely a new screen on the camera bump, it might be a start in a new direction towards true innovation, like Apple used to do.

Xiaomi is another step forward towards true in...

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