Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer: the transparent shell displays fake components, so what?

Announced with great fanfare by the Chinese manufacturer, the Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer sports a translucent back displaying components… which turn out to be fakes.

Since its presentation yesterday by Xiaomi, the Mi 8 Explorer has animated a lot of debate in the tech sphere. We are not talking here about the obvious plagiarism of the iPhone X by Xiaomi, but about the transparent back rather inspired by the HTC U12 Plus. Indeed, the press quickly realized that it is not really about the components used by the device.

Xiaomi's communication

The first hypothesis was that of a simple sticker printed and placed under the transparent shell to give the effect of displaying components. In fact, Xiaomi claimed in a statement for The Verge that "the transparent back of the Mi 8 Explorer Edition is well made of transparent glass, and there are no stickers. The components you see are indeed parts of the phone's motherboard.

However, it seems impossible for a smartphone manufacturer to integrate Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 as it is displayed by the device. The chip would heat up too much without a cooling system covering it.

Chengming Alpert, one of the first to point out the glass back of the Mi 8 Explorer, claims to have been able to confirm from several inside sources that the components displayed are indeed real, but that they have no use for operation. of the device. In other words, they are dummy components.

A successful design element

Xiaomi could probably have avoided a controversy by being a little more transparent. Finally, is it so serious if the displayed components are fake? The interest of the back displaying components is purely aesthetic. A smartphone is not a watch and even displaying the real components, we would not see any mechanical parts in action.

The use of fake components is therefore a design choice of the brand, which allows it to create a transparent back that is much prettier than what we have seen elsewhere, but much less honest. The first reactions and the first images of the device seem to show that this choice paid off.

To follow us, we invite you to download our Android and iOS application. You can read our articles, files, and watch our latest YouTube videos.