Xiaomi 18 Fold Review: A Deliberate Copy That Outguns the Duo on Paper
Xiaomi's newest foldable doesn't hide what it's aiming at. It matches the iPhone Duo's shape almost exactly, then beats it on nearly every spec sheet number,…
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Xiaomi's latest foldable leans hard into raw hardware and software freedom, delivering a phone that outlasts and out-multitasks nearly everything else in the…
Xiaomi's latest foldable leans hard into raw hardware and software freedom, delivering a phone that outlasts and out-multitasks nearly everything else in the category, even if the finer details haven't all been sorted out yet.
The 18 Fold opens into a 7.6-inch inner display from a 5.4-inch cover screen, with a 1.4:1 aspect ratio that keeps content scaling cleanly between the two sizes. The crease is barely noticeable in daily use, about 98% erased according to testing. Unfolded, the phone measures 5.02mm thick and weighs 219g, making it one of the lightest large foldables available. Folded, it comes in at 10.7mm. The display itself is genuinely bright, rated at 4,000 nits.
This is where the 18 Fold stands out most. It packs a 6,000mAh silicon carbon battery, more capacity than any current flagship, folding or not, and it delivered the longest runtime of any foldable tested. Charging hits 67W, fast enough to top up quickly despite the large cell.
The rear array includes a 200MP main sensor, a 50MP ultrawide, and a 50MP telephoto with 3.5x optical zoom, a combination that covers wide, standard and zoomed shots without leaning on digital cropping. The 200MP sensor also enables 200MP selfie captures. That said, the main sensor's physical size is comparable to a base-tier flagship from a couple of years back, so the megapixel count outpaces the actual image quality gains. The ultrawide shows visible grain in video even in well-lit conditions.
The standout feature is how far Xiaomi pushes multitasking. The 18 Fold can run up to six apps simultaneously as a group, swipeable and dismissible together, plus two additional floating windows layered on top. Windows resize by dragging, a four-finger swipe pulls up everything currently running, and any app can be expanded to full tablet size while retaining the option to snap back into a split view. It's an unusually open approach to running several things at once on a single screen.
That flexibility comes with rough patches. Some pre-installed apps don't fully adapt to the unfolded screen, the camera app shows uneven black bars, and the weather app's numbers appear stretched and low-resolution when opened. Third-party apps have their own quirks: video and streaming apps can distort under split screen, and some interfaces break on rotation. Face unlock is convenient for everyday use but isn't secure enough for sensitive tasks like banking.
The frame is aluminum rather than a heavier metal, which helps keep weight down but trades away some scratch resistance over time. Xiaomi's own in-house chip delivers strong numbers on paper, with claimed gains in CPU and GPU speed alongside lower power draw, and the top storage configuration is among the first to use faster LPDDR6 memory. In everyday use and moderate gaming sessions, performance holds up well. Under sustained heavy load, though, the phone ran into thermal issues, overheating and shutting down a stress test early on repeat attempts, with heat concentrating heavily near the chip rather than spreading evenly across the body.
Other details include dual physical SIM support, a built-in IR blaster for using the phone as a remote, and a pre-installed screen protector on the cover display. The hinge has a slightly scratchy feel and an occasional audible click that feels less refined than some rivals.
What works
What doesn't
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