Xiaomi's wide-screen slab phone could offer a similar form factor to its wide fold, but without a folding mechanism.
Xiaomi 18 Fold (pictured) comes with a wide, compact foldable design like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8
Photo Credit: Xiaomi
The foldable smartphone market is now evolving, with wide-fold handsets making their way to the market. Samsung introduced its first wide-fold this year in the form of the Galaxy Z Fold 8, while the iPhone Duo is Apple's first-ever foldable offering. Xiaomi has introduced the Xiaomi 18 Wide Fold as well. According to a tipster, the Chinese company is exploring a wide-screen slab phone that would offer a similar form factor to its wide fold, but without a folding mechanism.
In a Weibo post, tipster Digital Chat Station (translated from Chinese) claimed that Xiaomi is working on a conventional slab-style smartphone with a wide display. According to the leak, the purported handset could adopt screen proportions similar to the cover displays of wide foldables such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the iPhone Duo.
The tipster, however, did not share details about its specifications or launch timeline.
The reported phone could also feature a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, similar to the iPhone Duo. The Apple foldable, notably, features Touch ID instead of Apple's newer Face ID technology.
For comparison, the recently launched Xiaomi 18 Fold offers a possible reference for the form factor. The foldable features a 5.38-inch cover display with an aspect ratio close to 3:2, which gives it a wider appearance than the tall screens typically found on conventional smartphones.
Xiaomi has yet to indicate whether the reported slab phone will share any hardware with the company's wide foldable or simply borrow its wider screen format.
For reference, the Xiaomi 18 Fold features a 5.38-inch AMOLED cover display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 7.58-inch foldable AMOLED inner display, also with a 120Hz refresh rate. The wide foldable is powered by Xiaomi's 3nm deca-core Xring O3 AI flagship SoC, paired with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage.
On the optics front, the Xiaomi 18 Fold features a Leica-backed 200-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel periscope telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle shooter. The foldable also has 16-megapixel inner and outer front-facing cameras.
The Xiaomi 18 Fold packs a 6,000mAh battery with support for 67W wired and 50W wireless charging.
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