Recently unearthed pictures indicate that the board is not actually connected to the phone's circuitry. The photo shows that the dummy board leaves space for parts like the processor, but there's no sign of the ball grid array the chip would need to connect to in order to actually function. The real components, it seems, are underneath this phony board. So, while Xiaomi has tried to make its phone stand out and look cool by putting the board on display, this is literally window dressing.