Zhueque, Xiaomi's keyless phone

The completely buttonless phone model, codenamed Zhueque, is expected to be launched and sold in the first half of next year in the Chinese market, targeting technology lovers in limited quantities.

According to rumors, Xiaomi may only introduce Zhueque for the purpose of showing off technology, not placing emphasis on sales factors.

Zhueque is not equipped with regular physical buttons such as power button, volume up or down button or separate camera button, but will navigate by swiping, force touch or using voice commands.

Before Xiaomi, Huawei used to use touch operations on the curved edge of the screen to replace the volume up and down buttons but received many complaints that it was difficult to use.

Zhueque can also equip a selfie camera hidden under the new generation screen. In terms of configuration, the device integrates Snapdragon 8+ Gen 4 processor, an improved version of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 that will likely appear next October.

Xiaomi often has technology demonstration phone products such as the previous Mix series, which have completely different characteristics from regular smartphones with three ultra-thin sides, a selfie camera placed below, and a ceramic shell. Xiaomi is also one of the first technology companies to make smartphones with a transparent shell.