Xiaomi announces new folding smartphone "Xiaomi 18 Fold" in China on September 7th

Xiaomi has announced on its official X account that it will announce the new foldable smartphone "Xiaomi 18 Fold" in China on September 7th.

This product is positioned as the first flagship product to use the processor "Xiaomi XRING O3 chip (*O is a capital letter O)" developed by Xiaomi. The company has previously developed an in-house chip called "Xiaomi XRING O1", which was installed in the "Xiaomi 15S Pro" released in 2025.

Manufactured using a 3nm process, the XRING O3 is the first mobile processor to support the next-generation low-power memory standard LPDDR6. The memory bandwidth is 113.8GB/s, and the data transfer speed is 48% faster than the XRING O1. It is assumed that the AI ​​performance of the NPU has been increased by 45%. It boasts a 60% increase in CPU performance and an 85% increase in GPU performance, achieving a score of over 5.22 million on the "AnTuTu Benchmark" app.

Other detailed specifications have not been disclosed, but when you open the display, you can see that it has a horizontal passport-like shape. Among Chinese manufacturers, Huawei was the first to adopt this shape in its Pura The iPhone's first foldable smartphone, which is expected to be announced on September 9th (US Pacific Standard Time), is also expected to use this horizontal display.

Xiaomi may be hoping to take a lead in the Chinese market by announcing a folding device with a similar shape (and likely a similar shape) before Apple does. In the Japanese market, in addition to Samsung Electronics, OPPO, Motorola, Google, and ZTE are also introducing folding devices, and as there are signs that the folding market is revitalizing, it is expected that they will be introduced in Japan as well.

The actual Xiaomi 18 Fold will be exhibited at the exhibition "IFA 2026" being held in Berlin, Germany.