Xiaomi wanted to keep it under wraps until September: the foldable Xiaomi 18 Fold has leaked in real photos and looks better than we expected

Xiaomi wanted to keep its new foldable for a September launch, but the internet had other plans. While until now we’ve only seen blurry hands-on shots of the device from the company’s CEO Lei Jun, now Xiaomi 18 Fold is shown in the photos—fully visible, sharp, and from multiple angles. And it’s worth saying: it looks noticeably different from anything Xiaomi has shown in the foldable segment so far.

The blogger photographed it in-hand and from the side

The photos were shared on the Chinese network Weibo by blogger @韩路 and he pointed to the website XimiTime. This isn’t a rendered graphic, but real shots of the phone in someone’s hand—showing what marketing materials usually hide: how you hold the device, how thick it is, and what its edge looks like.

The side shot is the most interesting. When folded, the phone looks very thin in the photo and its thickness is close to that of regular unfolded flagship phones. No one has reported the exact millimeters yet, so we’ll have to wait for the official number until the launch—but the first impression from the photos suggests Xiaomi really worked on the thickness.

A horizontal module and a color we already know from Redmi

The most striking element on the back is the wide oval camera module that runs horizontally across most of the top part of the rear. It houses three lenses and an LED flash—it looks like a race track, and it’s a completely different approach than the circular island we’re used to seeing from Xiaomi.

The color also draws attention. The dark-red version labeled Cabernet Red is exactly the shade Redmi chose for the K100 Pro Max, so it’s clearly becoming a signature color for the current generation. According to the Spanish website MundoXiaomi, the inner display should be significantly wider than on previous MIX Fold models, and by its shape it’s closer to a square. The selfie camera vent sits in the top-right corner, and the bezels around the screen are even all around the perimeter.

Under the hood there should be an in-house Xring O3 chip

Xiaomi 18 Fold is supposed to be the first device with its own flagship chip Xring O3. It’s made using a 3nm process at TSMC, features a 10-core CPU with a clock speed up to 4.35 GHz, and a 16-core G2-Ultra NX graphics unit, whose maker claims up to 85% higher graphics performance. It also supports LPDDR6 memory with a bandwidth of 113.8 GB/s.

The numbers from the first tests match that—on AnTuTu the chip should surpass the 5,22 million-points mark, and in the multi-core section of Geekbench it reached beyond 15 000 points. These are unofficial measurements for now, but they align with what Xiaomi itself says about the performance of O3. So the foldable won’t be just a design exercise—it’ll also be a showcase for what the company can do in its own silicon workshops.

Launch in September; for Europe, it’s quiet for now

Xiaomi has already confirmed that the foldable will be called Xiaomi 18 Fold—not MIX Fold 5, as many rumors had suggested—and that it will arrive together with the rest of the series by the end of September. For now, though, we’re talking about the Chinese market. Whether and when the model will make it to Europe, the manufacturer hasn’t commented on, nor has it revealed the price. Considering that Xiaomi’s previous foldables haven’t been sold here officially, we wouldn’t count on a European launch just yet.

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