I loved the Galaxy Z Fold 8, but the Xiaomi 18 Fold takes things even further. Here are some of my initial impressions of Xiaomi's iPhone Ultra killer.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold is a wider foldable, similar to the popular Galaxy Z Fold 8, though it has notable design differences. It's shorter and wider than the Z Fold 8, and its corners are much rounder, with a design that looks a lot like the iPhone Ultra leaks. In my hand, it feels just as compelling as the Galaxy Z Fold 8, with a passport-like size when folded, making the 5.4-inch screen very easy to reach. Unfolded, the Xiaomi 18 Fold looks and feels like a small tablet, with a 7.5-inch display. Both displays have a √2:1 aspect ratio similar to A4 paper, which Xiaomi says is ideal for viewing content in both 16:9 and 4:3, meaning videos and photos, respectively. The crease is fairly visible, as the display is fairly reflective, but I can hardly feel it when running my fingers across it. Xiaomi says it uses a dual-layer Ultra Thin Glass (UTG) structure for enhanced protection.

The phone is powered by Xiaomi's all-new XRING 03 chipset, an in-house 3nm chip that promises high performance and powerful on-device AI capabilities. According to Xiaomi, the 10-core CPU comprises two Ultra cores, four Premium cores, and four Pro cores for 60% higher performance and 25% lower power consumption compared to the XRING 01. The 16-core GPU sets a new standard for graphics performance on a smartphone, while the NPU promises 200 TOPS of tensor performance for 45% faster on-device decoding performance. Paired with 12 or 16GB of LPDDR6 RAM and Hyper OS, the Xiaomi 18 Fold is primed to showcase the best that Xiaomi has to offer in the foldable space.