The unique screen of the Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha, which wraps around nearly the entire phone, is being produced by Visionox. CEO Lei Jun revealed that 1,000 engineers have spent the last two years working on the Alpha, an investment that cost the company CNY 500 million ($70 million).

This isn’t the first collaboration between the two companies – Visionox provided the flexible screen used in Xiaomi’s foldable phone prototype. That phone had a dual fold design with the left and right third of the phone folding backwards, a more dynamic version of the Alpha design.

Xiaomi even sent out engineers to help Visionox improve yields of its OLED screens. The Mi Mix Alpha is priced outside the means of anyone but well off early adopters, but as production of the screen (and 108MP camera) increases, the prices should drop to regular flagship levels before long.

Visionox is lead by the OLED team from Tsinghua University in Beijing, which is #16 in the QS World University Ranking for 2020, leapfrogging Yale and Columbia Universities.

Note that the current Mi Mix Alpha units are prototypes that use plastic on top of the display. Xiaomi President Lin Bin posted on Weibo saying that the retail units launching in December will use glass.

Source 1 | Source 2 (in Chinese) | Via | Source 3