Xiaomi has re-entered the book-style foldable market with the 18 Fold, and it is doing so with a design and a spec sheet that seem aimed squarely at the top of the category. The phone was unveiled during a private session at IFA in Berlin, just days before Apple was expected to announce its first folding handset. Coming two years after the Mix Fold 4, the 18 Fold is more than a simple refresh. Xiaomi has shifted away from the tall cover screens used by many earlier foldables and adopted the short, wide layout that is becoming increasingly common. At the same time, it has loaded the 18 Fold with a larger battery, a more powerful chip, and a new triple camera setup in order to avoid the trade-offs that still exist on rival foldables.

This launch puts Xiaomi in a direct fight with Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8, one of the most popular book-style foldables of the past year. Samsung has made an enormous effort to refine the Z Fold experience, but the $1,999 device still lacks the triple rear camera that buyers expect at that price point. It also runs with a 4,800mAh battery, which is smaller than what many flagship phones now offer. Xiaomi has looked at those details and built the 18 Fold to challenge them one by one.

A new shape for a familiar category

The most distinctive part of the 18 Fold is its screen shape. Instead of the narrow cover display that defined most book-style foldables in 2024 and 2025, Xiaomi has gone for a short and wide design. The inner screen measures 7.58 inches and the cover screen measures 5.38 inches, and both use a roughly 1.4:1 aspect ratio. That makes each panel shorter and wider than the corresponding screens on the Galaxy Z Fold 8. In fact, side by side, the Z Fold 8 looks positively tall and slender next to Xiaomi's new flagship.

The ratio is not random. It closely matches the proportions of international paper sizes and IMAX presentation. That

Source: The Verge News