Xiaomi just revealed its first wide-bodied folding phone. But are you even surprised? Likely not. Unlike Samsung, which positions its wide-format foldable below its conventional flagship foldable, Xiaomi has taken a page from Huawei’s playbook. It did not hold back on the specifications.
Folks, meet the Xiaomi 18 Fold [CH]. Xiaomi calls it a “medium-fold” device, which sounds like a laundry setting but refers to its unusually broad proportions. When closed, it has a compact 5.38-inch outer display. Open it, and you get a squarish 7.58-inch inner screen designed for reading, videos, multitasking, and pretending your phone is a tiny productivity workstation.
Both are LTPO OLED panels with adaptive refresh rates of up to 120Hz and peak brightness reaching 4,000 nits. The inner display also uses a double-layer UTG structure, an anti-reflective coating, and a polarizer-free design to keep text sharp and reflections under control.
Powering the phone is Xiaomi’s homegrown XRING O3 AI flagship processor, manufactured on a 3nm process and paired with UFS 4.1 storage. Memory options range up to LPDDR6 on the top-tier model. HyperOS 4 runs the show, assisted by an NPU delivering up to 200 TOPS. That is a great many operations for checking messages and watching cat videos across two apps simultaneously.
Xiaomi has also fitted three Leica-tuned rear cameras: a 200-megapixel main camera, 50-megapixel ultrawide, and 50-megapixel periscope telephoto offering 3.5× optical zoom. Clearly, being unusually shaped is no excuse for having fewer cameras.
A 6,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery supports 67W wired and 50W wireless charging. Yet the phone still weighs 219g (7.7 ounces), measures 10.68 mm (0.42 inches) when folded, and shrinks to 5.02 mm (0.20 inches) on one side when open.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold starts at 10,999 yuan [CH] (~US$1,640), while the top 16GB/1TB configuration with LPDDR6 memory costs as much as 14,999 yuan (~US$2,235). It is currently available in China, with international availability yet to be announced.
Images: Xiaomi [CH].
