Xiaomi patents a Samsung Galaxy Fold clone

Xiaomi is an electronics OEM clearly mulling the prospect of breaking into the ultra-premium folding device segment soon. This is pretty apparent thanks to a series of different patents in which it has claimed various different takes on the cutting-edge technology currently brought to market by a handful of companies that include Samsung and Motorola thus far.

Some of this IP indicates a novel approach to this concept, not the least of which is one in which the top portion folds forward so as to allow the user to take selfies with a rear-facing camera array. However, Xiaomi has also gone to less original places with other recent patents, which depict designs quite like those of the Huawei Mate Xs and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. Now, it seems the company has done the same with the Galaxy Fold.

This patent, conferred on Xiaomi by the Chinese authority CNIPA on October 20, 2020, shows a book-like hinged tablet with an additional well-bezelled secondary display on its cover - just like Samsung's inaugural foldable, in other words. Then again, the new design does add something like a sensor-bar that takes up a wide strip on one "leaf" of the main display to house what are probably cameras and other modules.

This means that, should this potential Xiaomi foldable be made to have similar proportions to the Galaxy Fold, it would have a smaller folding screen. On the other hand, this new solution may be preferable to the large asymmetrical chunk taken out of the latter's display by its own selfie cameras, not to mention the incongruous punch-hole found in the second-gen Galaxy Z Fold2.

Then again, a real-life version of its possible Xiaomi counterpart may take some time to get here for comparative purposes - if indeed it does so at all.