When the person running your mobile division posts the leak himself, it’s not really a leak anymore. Lu Weibing, Xiaomi’s partner and Mobile Phone Division President, just posted images of a Ceramic Special Edition of the Xiaomi 18 Fold on Weibo, hours before the phone’s scheduled 7:00 PM China time launch. The finish is soft pink, and Xiaomi says each unit has a slightly unique color variation. So yes, your ceramic Xiaomi 18 Fold will technically be one of a kind.
As revealed by Gizmochina, the special edition doesn’t change the design of the phone at all. No extra engravings, no flashy branding, none of that. The ceramic finish does the talking. And honestly, that’s the right call. The 18 Fold already has a clean, considered look with its ultra-narrow four-sided equal bezels, big super-elliptical rounded corners, a racetrack-shaped camera module on the back, and a completely flat wraparound frame. Slapping decorative elements on top of that would have been a mess. The standard colors are Warm Gold White, Black, and Western Red, but the pink ceramic version is clearly the most eye-catching of the bunch.
The design story is interesting, but the real news is what’s inside. Xiaomi is positioning the 18 Fold around a new “mid-fold” form factor, which is their way of saying the proportions are built around usability rather than just making a phone that folds. Both screens use a paper-like square-root-2 to 1 aspect ratio: the outer display is 5.38 inches and the inner foldable panel is 7.58 inches. Both are protected by double-layer UTG ultra-thin glass, which is the kind of thing that matters a lot when you’re paying premium prices for a folding screen.
Under the hood sits Xiaomi’s own Xring O3 chip, which has already cleared 5.22 million points on AnTuTu. That’s a serious number. The phone is also one of the first devices to use Changxin LPDDR6 memory, hitting memory bandwidth of up to 113.8 GB/s. For context, most flagship phones are still running LPDDR5X. So on the specs sheet at least, Xiaomi isn’t cutting corners anywhere.
Here’s why all of this matters beyond just one phone launch. Xiaomi has been building its own silicon with the Xring series, which puts it in a much smaller club alongside Apple and Samsung. Owning your chip means tighter integration, longer software support potential, and less dependence on Qualcomm pricing. The Xring O3 doing this well in benchmarks this early is a sign that Xiaomi’s chip ambitions are moving faster than most people expected.
The key specs worth knowing ahead of launch:
- Outer display: 5.38 inches with square-root-2 to 1 aspect ratio
- Inner display: 7.58 inches, also square-root-2 to 1
- Both screens protected by double-layer UTG ultra-thin glass
- Xring O3 chip, scoring over 5.22 million on AnTuTu
- Changxin LPDDR6 memory with up to 113.8 GB/s bandwidth
- Ceramic Special Edition in soft pink, with unique per-unit color variation
Pricing starts above 10,000 yuan, which puts it north of roughly $1,380 USD. That’s expensive, but it’s in line with where premium foldables live right now. The full announcement is just hours away, so expect pricing tiers, availability details, and probably a few more surprises to drop very soon. Keep an eye on this one.