A triple camera, big battery, and new Arm GPU make the 18 Fold a phone to be reckoned with.

A triple camera, big battery, and new Arm GPU make the 18 Fold a phone to be reckoned with.

Xiaomi is the latest manufacturer to release a short, wide foldable phone, in the week Apple is expected to do the same. I got to try the 18 Fold behind closed doors at IFA last week, and while it looks and feels similar enough to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8, superior specs make it feel like the phone I wish Samsung had made.

The 18 Fold is Xiaomi’s first book-style foldable since 2024’s Mix Fold 4, but the company has followed Huawei and Samsung in moving to a short, squat design. Xiaomi’s phone goes further though: it’s both shorter and wider than Samsung’s, with a roughly 1.4:1 aspect ratio on both the 7.58-inch inner and 5.38-inch outer screens — almost an exact match for both international paper sizes and IMAX screens, meaning this may be the one phone capable of playing The Odyssey without letterboxing.

In practice, this still feels similar to the Z Fold 8 though. It’s compact and pocketable when closed and the cover screen is comfortable to use single-handed — though I expect it too will have issues with some apps running awkwardly on the short screen. When open this is a natural form factor for watching movies or reading ebooks, if perhaps slightly less well suited to multitasking work, though Xiaomi still includes both split-screen apps and floating windows with multitasking in mind.

Where Samsung may have the edge is build quality. The 18 Fold looks great, available in black, white, or this striking red, plus a pink ceramic special edition that the company is only making 1,500 of. But it’s slightly heavier and thicker than the Z Fold 8, and Xiaomi hasn’t announced any IP rating for it at all. There’s also the crease, which to my eye feels more obvious than on this year’s Samsung foldables. Oppo remains the only company to have all-but eliminated the foldable crease, in its Find N6 foldable, and I’ll be fascinated to see how close Apple gets to matching that this week.

While my brief time with the 18 Fold was focused on getting to grips with the form factor, the phone arguably stands out more for its specs. For one, this is the first Xiaomi phone powered by its own Xring O3 chipset, which promises Snapdragon 8 Elite-level performance. It includes the debut of Arm’s Mali G2-Ultra NX GPU, which brings with it mobile-first support for Arm’s DLSS-style graphics acceleration on Android.

It’s not just the chip though. The 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery is substantially larger than the Samsung phone’s 4,800mAh, with support for 67W wired charging and 50W wireless. The two OLED displays deliver up to 4,000 nits of peak brightness. Most importantly there’s a triple rear camera bolstered by Xiaomi’s long-running Leica partnership, with a 200-megapixel main camera using a 1/1.56-inch-type sensor, a 50-megapixel 3.5x periscope telephoto, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide.

I really loved the Galaxy Z Fold 8 when I reviewed it, surprising myself with how quickly I adapted to the new design. My biggest hesitation was that it lacked the triple camera I’d expect from any phone approaching $2,000 in price. By fixing that, while improving on the battery and displays, Xiaomi has made what could become my pick of the foldables on the market right now — though the lack of IP rating does give me pause.

Of course, that foldable market is about to change dramatically if Apple announces the foldable iPhone we’re all expecting it to tomorrow. In the meantime, Xiaomi has laid down the gauntlet — at least in China. The 18 Fold is available to preorder there from ¥10,999 (about $1,600), with official sales on September 10th, but Xiaomi hasn’t yet confirmed whether or not the phone will ever see an international launch.