Xiaomi's wide 18 Fold outspecs Samsung's Z Fold 8 days before Apple's foldable debut

Xiaomi has taken the wraps off the 18 Fold, a book-style foldable with an unusually short and wide shape that pushes the industry's newest form factor further than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 — and it lands in the same week Apple is widely expected to show its first foldable iPhone. According to The Verge, which handled the device behind closed doors at IFA, the 18 Fold is Xiaomi's first book-style foldable since 2024's Mix Fold 4 and follows Huawei and Samsung in abandoning tall, narrow designs in favour of a squat silhouette.

A form factor borrowed, then stretched

The 18 Fold is both shorter and wider than Samsung's equivalent. Both of its screens — a 7.58-inch inner panel and a 5.38-inch cover display — carry a roughly 1.4:1 aspect ratio that, as The Verge points out, almost exactly matches international paper sizes and IMAX cinema screens, making it unusually well suited to widescreen films without letterboxing. In hand, the reviewer found it similar to the Z Fold 8: compact and pocketable when closed, with a cover screen comfortable for one-handed use, though it will likely suffer the same awkward app layouts that affect other short-screened foldables. Opened up, it favours films and e-books over heavy multitasking, although Xiaomi ships split-screen apps and floating windows.

Where it outguns Samsung

The internal hardware is where Xiaomi makes its case. It is the first phone to run Xiaomi's own Xring O3 chipset, which the company says delivers performance in Snapdragon 8 Elite territory, and it debuts Arm's Mali G2-Ultra NX GPU with mobile-first support for Arm's DLSS-style graphics acceleration on Android. The 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery comfortably exceeds the 4,800mAh cell inside Samsung's foldable, with 67W wired and 50W wireless charging, and both OLED displays reach up to 4,000 nits of peak brightness. The camera system is a Leica-tuned triple setup: a 200-megapixel main camera with a 1/1.56-inch-type sensor, a 50-megapixel 3.5x periscope telephoto and a 50-megapixel ultrawide. That last point matters because The Verge's main complaint about Samsung's phone, which sells for close to $2,000, was the absence of a triple camera at that price.

Compromises on the outside

Build quality is where Samsung keeps its edge. The 18 Fold comes in black, white and red finishes, plus a pink ceramic special edition limited to 1,500 units, but it is slightly heavier and thicker than the Z Fold 8, and Xiaomi has not announced any water or dust resistance rating for it at all — a notable gap for a premium device. The Verge also found the display crease more visible than on Samsung's current foldables, with Oppo's Find N6 still the benchmark that everyone else, Apple included, will be measured against. There are no foldable-specific software features that rivals do not already offer.

China first, the world later, maybe

For now, this is a China story. Preorders opened there at ¥10,999, roughly $1,600, with general sales starting September 10, and Xiaomi has not confirmed whether the phone will ever be released internationally. That leaves the global contest to Samsung and, very shortly, Apple.

Why it matters

The 18 Fold signals that the short, wide foldable is becoming an industry standard rather than a Samsung experiment, with Huawei, Xiaomi and — by all expectations — Apple converging on the same proportions within weeks of each other. It also raises the hardware bar: a first-party chipset, a far larger battery and a proper triple camera directly target the Z Fold 8's known weaknesses, and Samsung will presumably have to respond. But with no IP rating, a China-only launch and a crease that trails Oppo's best effort, Xiaomi's challenge to the established players is, for the moment, confined to its home market — just as the foldable category is about to be reshaped by Apple's arrival.