Xiaomi has unveiled the Xiaomi 18 Fold in China, taking another shot at the premium foldable smartphone market.
It arrives as a new rival to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, while Apple is widely expected to enter the foldable space with its first foldable iPhone later this week.
As teased in the past week, the Xiaomi 18 Fold gets a compact passport size form factor and it features Leica triple-camera setup.
Xiaomi 18 Fold specs and features
The Xiaomi 18 Fold gets a 5.38-inch outer display with rounded edges which Xiaomi says is designed to be easier to operate with one hand. It uses a 120Hz AMOLED panel that pushes 1712×1168 pixels resolution and it comes protected with Xiaomi’s Longjing Glass 3.0.
When unfolded, you get a 7.58-inch inner display that pushes a resolution of 2364×1672 pixels and 120Hz refresh rate on a flexible AMOLED panel.
Both screens support P3 colour gamut and offer a peak brightness of up to 4,000 nits.
For the folding mechanism, Xiaomi has introduced a new-generation dragon bone hinge using a three-stage connecting structure.
The inner display also uses a dual-layer UTG ultra-thin glass construction. Xiaomi claims the outer 50-micron UTG layer offers 178% higher reliability, while the inner 30-micron UTG layer improves impact resistance by 29%. These are Xiaomi’s own internal claims.
When it comes to dimensions and weigh, it is slightly chunkier than the Galaxy Z Fold 8.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold weighs 219g and measures 5.02mm thick when unfolded and 10.68mm when folded.
Under the hood is Xiaomi’s XRING O3 flagship SoC. Xiaomi says the chip features a 10-core CPU, a 16-core GPU and an NPU based on its own large-model architecture.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold is also among the first devices to support LPDDR6 memory but this is only offered for the range topping 1TB model. The lower variants with 256GB to 512GB storage uses LPDDR5X RAM. All Xiaomi 18 Fold are using UFS 4.1 storage.
For photography, there is a proper flagship-class Leica-branded triple-camera setup. It consists of a 200MP Leica main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor and f/1.7 aperture and a 50MP f/2.4 ultra-wide-angle camera.
There’s also a 50MP periscope telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom and optical image stabilisation, which offers 7x optical-quality zoom. The device can shoot 4K videos up to 60fps and 8K videos at 24fps.
Meanwhile, the front gets a 16MP f/2.2 selfie camera with a 90 degree wide angle.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold is powered by a generous 6,000mAh battery with 20% silicon content. It supports 67W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
Out of the box, it runs on Xiaomi HyperOS 4.
In China, the Xiaomi 18 Fold is offered in several finishes including red, black and white. There’s also a special ultra-light ceramic version as shown above.
Xiaomi 18 Fold official pricing
The Xiaomi 18 Fold goes on sale in China from 10 September at 10am local time and here’s the official pricing:
- 12GB + 256GB – CNY10,999 (about RM6,628)
- 12GB + 512GB – CNY11,999 (about RM7,230)
- 16GB + 512GB – CNY12,999 (about RM7,833)
- 16GB + 1TB LPDDR6 – CNY14,999 (about RM9,038)
- 16GB + 1TB LPDDR6 Ceramic Special Edition – CNY15,999 (about RM9,640)
So far there’s no word of its international availability.
