Folded like a passport, unfolded like a tablet: Xiaomi officially showed the 18 Fold along with the new Xiye Red color

Until now, we only knew Xiaomi 18 Fold from leaked photos and Lei Jun’s statements. That has just changed — five days before the autumn launch, the Chinese company released official images of its priciest foldable and also gave its design a name of its own. It calls it mid-fold and claims it’s the solution to the problem foldable phones have struggled with since their very beginnings.

Mid-fold: folded as big as a passport

The logic behind the new format is simple. Big clamshell-style devices like book-fold models offer a huge surface area when opened, but most of the time people use them closed, on a small external display. Smaller “clamshells” are easier to carry, but in practice they make compromises in almost everything. Xiaomi 18 Fold is supposed to sit right between them—when folded, it should be about the size of a passport, according to the manufacturer, and light enough to be operated with one hand.

Gizmochina (Gizmochina) also pulled out specific diagonal sizes from Xiaomi’s official video: the external display is 5.38 inches, while the main one measures 7.58 inches when unfolded. It also gets a new aspect ratio designed to fit better with working across multiple windows at once and video watching — basically exactly what you’ll use that big screen for in real life.

Xiye Red, symmetrical frame, and a track-shaped camera module

The body is built on an ultra-thin frame that’s symmetrical across all four sides, with noticeably rounded corners. The rear camera module has the shape of a running track, and it connects to a flat frame that wraps around the entire body — Xiaomi calls it a clean, uninterrupted line. The Leica labeling on the lenses is also clearly visible in the photos.

However, the star of the official materials is the color. The portal XiaomiTime pointed out that the phone is coming in a new shade, Xiye Red, inspired by an autumn mountain landscape. It’s an unusual move — foldables have so far mostly been sold in black, white, and silver, and that deep red flagship among them won’t go unnoticed.

Inside: XRING O3, LPDDR6 memory, and the new hinge

The Xiaomi 18 Fold will be the first phone with a custom XRING O3 chip, recently spotted in the Geekbench database. It’ll be paired with LPDDR6 from CXMT with speeds up to 12,800 Mb/s and capacity up to 16 GB — we already wrote about this global premiere in late August. On the software side, it will run HyperOS 4 with a built-in MiMo AI model that should work directly on the phone.

Xiaomi also showed off a new hinge it calls dragon bone, along with a testing system built on simulations. The hinge is usually the weakest link in foldables, so it’s a good sign that the company is giving it its own section. The battery isn’t officially confirmed yet — earlier leaks suggest a capacity around 6,000 mAh and 67 W charging, but the official numbers will be known only after the premiere.

Premiere 7 September and a price Xiaomi has never had before

The Xiaomi 18 Fold will be unveiled on 7 September at the autumn flagship conference, where it will be joined by the N70 Pro, N70 Max, and N90 Max electric vehicles, plus the Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max tablet — all powered by the same XRING O3 chipset. Group President Lu Weibing described the puzzle-fold as the highest-positioned and most daring model in the entire series, promising a full-fledged experience like that of a mainstream flagship phone—and in some ways even surpassing it.

That will be reflected in the price tag as well. According to industry estimates, it’s set to launch at around 12,000 yuan, or roughly $1,670—making the 18 Fold Xiaomi’s first phone above the 10,000-yuan mark. For now, it looks like it will be exclusive to the China market, so we’ll have to wait for European availability — Xiaomi hasn’t officially confirmed the exact specs, prices, or the sales schedule yet.

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