This future LeEco phone concept shows off an edge-screened, buttonless beauty [Gallery]

Chinese company LeEco (previously LeTV) hasn’t launched a phone in the United States yet, but reports from last year say that that’s probably going to change soon. Hopefully, when they do, this is the phone that they’ll launch. We’ve recently gotten our hands on these official LeEco-made renders depicting a future phone concept, sporting a Samsung-like edge screen, and a sleek all-metal buttonless design…

A person familiar with the project says that, while this is still definitely a concept, these renders are a reflection of what the LeEco team is working towards with its upcoming hardware releases. As you can see, the phone features the aforementioned buttonless design, but we’ve heard that the team is also working on a MagSafe-like charging based on a USB-C port and a fingerprint sensor that’s hidden in the body of the phone (LeEco was the first company to implement Snapdragon Sense ID, which would allow this kind of implementation).

Obviously not all of this is practical at the moment. A buttonless design may not be feasible with the current state of software, but since LeEco’s phones run Android, there’s of course opportunity for customization on their end. Samsung has introduced a wide variety of edge-powered features over the years, and it would make sense for LeEco to do similar with this phone.

And, once again, this is just a concept. To be perfectly clear, this phone doesn’t physically exist yet. But LeEco has built some phones that seem really nice, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to see the company eventually put out something this impressive. We got our hands on the Le Max Pro — aimed mostly at China — at CES earlier this year and we were impressed. LeEco was the first manufacturer to bring the Snapdragon 820 to a phone, and is also behind funding a huge electric car startup.

For now I’m going to stay a little skeptical, but if LeEco enters the US market with a phone even half as flashy as this, I think it will enter the realm of being a recognized name in the Android OEM space in no time.