Six days with the new Xiaomi 18 Fold: the first foreign YouTube review praises the hinge and the fold. How does its custom XRING O3 chipset perform—and what about the camera?

Xiaomi 18 Fold was unveiled just a few hours ago, but on YouTube there’s already one of the first international reviews. The channel ben’s gadget reviews had the phone in hand six days before the premiere—and since he tested it without an official spec list, he had to measure some things himself.

A display with corners no one else has

The first thing the reviewer notices on the 18 Fold is the asymmetrical display corners. On the right side they’re nicely rounded; on the left they run into a sharp right angle. No other foldable does it this way—competitors either round all four corners, or leave a small unused space in the corner.

He admits that his eye gets used to it with difficulty and he isn’t sure which solution he likes more. At the same time, though, he adds that you have to imagine a custom-made panel behind it—Xiaomi put in the work so the display fills the entire area without any empty space anywhere.

He describes the outer display as smooth at 120 Hz, and the inner one as a wide-angle panel with up to 4,000 nits brightness. He estimated the diagonals at 5.5 and 7.65 inches; the official specs Xiaomi published only at the presentation say 5.38 and 7.58 inches.

The hinge and the fold are, according to him, the biggest improvement

Here the reviewer is at his most complimentary. With the Mix Fold 4 from two years ago, he was bothered that the fold was clearly visible compared to Chinese competitors—and that the hinge wouldn’t keep the phone open across a wider range of angles; when pressed, it simply clicked shut.

On the 18 Fold, according to him, both things have improved. The hinge keeps the phone open over a much wider range, and the fold is “dramatically better”. As a baseline he takes the OPPO Find N6, which he considers the best foldable on the market—and Xiaomi is, according to him, about 98% there. You can only feel a hint of the crease, and the fold has to be found by shining light on it at an angle.

What’s interesting is what he says about thickness. Xiaomi didn’t give him an official spec list, so he measured the phone with a regular tape measure and estimated a little over 10 millimeters—closer to 11. That’s more than most current foldables, but with a passport-size shape, he says it’s not a problem.

The in-house chip lags behind in numbers, but not in practice

Xiaomi 18 Fold is the first phone with its own 3nm XRING O3 chip. In Geekbench, the reviewer says it doesn’t keep up with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which was to be expected. More important is what they say about real use: they played games on it, edited video in LumaFusion, the 4K timeline moved smoothly without stuttering, and the export took a “decent” amount of time.

After six days of intensive use, they didn’t run into any performance issues. The 6 000 mAh battery is compared to the 4 800 mAh in the Galaxy Z Fold 8 — significantly more, even though the phone is more compact.

Cameras: 200 MPx, yes; periscope, according to them, no

The main sensor has 200 MP and an aperture of f/1.7. The reviewer rates it as a very decent one for “a grab-and-build” — it doesn’t catch up to the Xiaomi 17 Ultra or Vivo X300 Ultra, but in this category it’s among the best. He also likes the ability to shoot in full resolution and then crop shots without losing detail, plus Leica’s cinematic profiles, whose trend, according to him, was kickstarted by Xiaomi.

And here’s a contradiction worth paying attention to. Some international sites wrote about a periscope telephoto lens, but after a week with the phone the reviewer says it’s not a periscope — it’s a regular telephoto with an 80 mm focal length, so roughly 3.5x zoom. Even so, they still rank it among the best zoom options in the foldable category, and they add that the Galaxy Z Fold 8—and the upcoming iPhone telephoto lens—don’t have anything like it.

The trio is completed by a 50 MPx ultra-wide-angle camera. A practical tip from the video: the external display can be turned on as a preview, so you can film with the main camera while still seeing yourself — it’s a solid vlogging setup from the phone.

System: HyperOS 4 optimized for a wide display

The phone runs HyperOS 4.0.5 built on Android 17. The reviewer likes that Xiaomi’s software really is tailored to the shape of the display — once unfolded, for example, the delete button for notifications moves to the right, where you can reach it with your thumb, and Xiaomi’s own apps open in two columns.

They praise multitasking the most. Xiaomi took a solution where two running apps dynamically zoom in and out instead of being split rigidly into halves. On top of that, there’s a resizable floating window you can slide to the side and bring back whenever you need it. The only gripe is the new system look, which they say copies Apple’s “liquid glass” effect.

Verdict: a good phone, but not a revolution

Overall, they like the 18 Fold — they highlight how comfortable it is to hold and that the folded phone even fits in a shirt pocket. At the same time, it holds back the excitement around wide foldables. They say the new shape is fun and fresh, but it doesn’t bring anything you couldn’t do with the previous shape. They even directly say that the reviews of the “revolution” for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 were, in their view, overly generous.

The bad news at the end is the same: Xiaomi 18 Fold will only be sold in China. The reviewer recommends importing via Hong Kong sellers, but you should expect that you won’t get a European warranty with this kind of purchase.

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