Xiaomi 18 Fold arrives with a new mid-fold design and a chip that claims 5.2M AnTuTu
Xiaomi has unveiled the 18 Fold, a foldable smartphone built around its in-house Xring O3 chip that the company says scored over 5.2 million points on AnTuTu — a benchmark no other phone has cleared. Sales start in China on September 10, 2026, starting at around $1,639. If you're in the US or UK, there's no confirmed path to buy one: Xiaomi's Mix Fold 4 never left China in 2024, and history suggests the 18 Fold may follow the same route, per GagadgetEN.
The form factor
The 18 Fold introduces what Xiaomi calls a "mid-fold" design — wider than a clamshell flip phone, narrower than a full book-style foldable like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. The outer screen is a 5.38-inch LIPO-OLED panel; unfold it and you get a 7.58-inch display running at up to 120 Hz with a peak brightness of 4,000 nits. Both screens use a roughly 2:1 aspect ratio, which Xiaomi says makes the on-screen keyboard 8% wider than a standard 6.9-inch smartphone.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold's mid-fold design sits between a clamshell and a full book-style foldable.
The phone is 5.02 mm thin when open and 10.68 mm folded, weighing 219 grams. Xiaomi uses a Dragon Bone Hinge, 7-series aluminum alloy frame, and two layers of ultra-thin glass (UTG) over the flexible inner display. The company claims it survives drops from 1.2 meters and has passed 492 stress-test cycles.
The Dragon Bone Hinge and UTG glass are designed to handle drops from up to 1.2 meters.
The chip claim
The Xring O3 is Xiaomi's newest proprietary chip. It reportedly hit 5,228,014 on AnTuTu — beating Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite — with Xiaomi citing a 60% CPU uplift and 85% GPU improvement over the previous generation. One important caveat: Notebookcheck notes those benchmarks come from Xiaomi's own labs, not independent retail testing. The top configuration also becomes the first smartphone to use LPDDR6 RAM — lower-end variants stick with LPDDR5X.
The Xring O3 chip is Xiaomi's most powerful in-house processor to date.
Cameras, battery, and price
The camera system is co-developed with Leica: a 200MP main sensor, a 50MP periscope telephoto at 3.5x optical zoom, and a 50MP ultra-wide. A 6,000 mAh silicon battery supports 67W wired and 50W wireless charging. Connectivity covers 5G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, UWB, and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2. The phone ships with HyperOS 4 based on Android 17.
The Ceramic Special Edition features a silicon-nitride back and is limited to 1,500 units.
Pricing in China runs from roughly $1,639 (12GB/256GB) to $2,235 (16GB/1TB with LPDDR6). A limited Ceramic Special Edition — silicon-nitride back, 1,500 units only — tops out at around $2,384. For context, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 launched at $1,899 in the US, which makes the 18 Fold competitive on paper. Whether it ever competes in practice outside China remains the real question.
