Xiaomi 18 Fold Wide Foldable: 200MP Leica and 6,000mAh

Quick summary: The Xiaomi 18 Fold is Xiaomi’s first wide foldable, up for pre-order in China with sales starting September 10. It’s probably the best-specced wide foldable yet, a direct rival to the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Apple’s upcoming foldable. I reached out to Xiaomi, but they usually send me their mid-tier phones.

Specs

• Displays: a 5.38-inch cover screen and a 7.58-inch folding display, with a full RGB panel layout up to 4,000 nits. There’s what looks like an anti-reflective film, dual-layer ultra-thin glass, and the selfie camera in the top right.
• Build: a new Dragon Bone hinge, metal frame, 5.02mm unfolded and 219g. That’s a bit chunky versus the Fold 8’s 4.5mm.
• Chip: Xiaomi’s own XRING O3, with a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU.
• Memory: up to 16GB RAM and 1TB, with LPDDR6 on the 1TB model.
• Battery: 6,000mAh, the biggest in this class, with 67W wired and 50W wireless charging.
• Cameras: Leica triple system with a 200MP main, 50MP ultra-wide and 50MP 3.5x periscope telephoto, plus 16MP selfie cameras on each screen.
• Other: HyperOS 4, IP58 and IP59 (not full dust resistance), USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Wi-Fi 7.

Price

Roughly $1,600 to $2,300 converted from China pricing. I’d pick the 16GB/512GB model as the sweet spot, since 256GB is too tight for me.

Design

I love that the cameras run horizontally, which I think Samsung will move toward. The cover screen has thinner bezels than Apple’s or the Pixel’s. It looks like a beast but small in the hand. You can probably import one from Chinese sites soon.