Xiaomi joins the new foldable-phone battle with its 18 Fold and in-house chip

Xiaomi has entered China’s latest foldable-phone contest with a device built around both a compact design and the company’s growing semiconductor ambitions. The 18 Fold combines a 5.38-inch outer display with a 7.58-inch inner screen in a format Xiaomi calls “mid-fold.”

The design aims to make the phone easier to use with one hand while still offering a larger display when opened. The device starts at 10,999 yuan, about $1,640, with 12 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage. The top version costs 14,999 yuan, about $2,235, and includes 16 GB of memory, 1 TB of storage and LPDDR6 memory.

The 18 Fold uses Xiaomi’s XRing O3, a 10-core processor with a neural processing unit designed to run large artificial-intelligence models. Xiaomi says the chip supports LPDDR6 and delivers bandwidth of up to 113.8 GB per second. The company also presented the XRing O100, an AI accelerator with bandwidth of 1.22 terabytes per second and a three-dimensional wafer-level packaging system, according to Xiaomi.

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unlikely

Xiaomi is extending the same chip strategy to other products. Its new Pad 9 Pro Max tablet uses the XRing O3, has a 13.3-inch screen and a 12,000 mAh battery, and starts at 4,799 yuan, about $715. Both products run HyperOS 4, Xiaomi’s new operating system, which the company says will deepen integration between its devices and in-house components.

The launch comes as memory prices rise and competition intensifies in China’s premium market. Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s founder and chief executive, said a 6,999-yuan starting price for the 18 Fold was “unlikely” because “memory is simply too expensive right now.” Xiaomi said higher component costs are affecting smartphones, computers and televisions, and Lei acknowledged that increases in final prices had become inevitable.

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memory is simply too expensive right now