Forget the spec sheet for a second. Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s CEO, was just spotted holding a foldable phone in burgundy. Not black. Not silver. Burgundy. That alone tells you Xiaomi is treating this one differently.
According to Gizmochina, an official image has surfaced showing Jun holding what appears to be a wide-format foldable, the kind that opens like a book rather than folding tall and thin. None of Xiaomi’s existing foldables come in burgundy, so this is almost certainly something new. The official name is still locked down, but recent leaks point to “Xiaomi MIX Ultra” as the working title. Earlier reports floated names like Mix Fold 5 and Xiaomi 17 Fold, so take all of that with a grain of salt until Xiaomi makes it official.
On paper, the MIX Ultra looks seriously stacked. The inner display is expected to land between 7.5 and 7.6 inches, putting it in direct competition with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. You also get a 200-megapixel main camera, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, a roughly 6,000mAh battery with wireless charging, and HyperOS 4 running on top of Android 17. That’s a strong package. The camera spec in particular is aggressive, and if Xiaomi’s imaging pipeline can keep up, this could be a genuine contender for best foldable camera in 2026.
But the real story here is the chip. Xiaomi is already teasing its next in-house processor, the Xring O3, and the MIX Ultra is expected to be the first device to run it. The original Xring O1 made a strong impression when it launched earlier this year, showing that Xiaomi was serious about building its own silicon. The O3, reportedly codenamed “Lhasa”, looks like a meaningful step forward. It’s expected to shift from the O1’s four-cluster, 10-core design to a three-cluster layout, likely in a 1+3+4 or 1+2+5 configuration. The prime core could hit 4.05GHz, Titanium performance cores at 3.42GHz, and efficiency cores at 3.02GHz. For context, the O1’s efficiency cores ran at 1.79GHz. That’s a big jump.
The GPU is also getting a clock speed bump, going from around 1.2GHz to roughly 1.5GHz. Memory speed is expected to stay at 9,600 MT/s. So this isn’t a total reinvention, more like a well-targeted upgrade where it counts most: raw CPU speed and graphics throughput.
Xiaomi isn’t stopping at one device with this chip. The Xring O3 is also expected to power the Xiaomi Pad 8S Pro, a tablet with a 12.5-inch screen, a 12,000mAh battery, up to 16GB of RAM, a 32-megapixel front camera, and a 50-megapixel plus 2-megapixel rear setup. A tablet and a flagship foldable launching together would be a statement move, and it would put Xiaomi’s chip ambitions front and center in a way that’s hard to ignore.
The bigger picture here is that Xiaomi is clearly playing a long game with its own silicon. Building chips is expensive, slow, and risky. But if the O3 delivers on these numbers, Xiaomi gets something valuable: full control over the performance story of its most important devices. That matters a lot in a market where Qualcomm and MediaTek still dominate. Xiaomi is betting that owning the chip means owning the narrative. And right now, that bet is looking pretty interesting.
- Inner display: 7.5 to 7.6 inches
- Main camera: 200 megapixels
- Battery: around 6,000mAh with wireless charging
- Chip: Xring O3, up to 4.05GHz prime core
- Software: HyperOS 4 on Android 17
- Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
Pricing and availability haven’t been confirmed yet, but given that Xiaomi typically positions its MIX lineup as a premium flagship series, expect this one to land at a premium price. More details should come as the official launch gets closer.