Xiaomi’s Double Folding Phone Looks Pretty Amazing

This is the new foldable phone by Xiaomi. After watching the video I’m rather surprised at how cool and futuristic this thing feels.

Xiaomi’s President Lin Bin published the video on the Chinese social network Weibo, calling it the world’s first double foldable phone. This expandable phone/foldable tablet is worthy of a sci-fi movie.

“This symmetrical double-folded form perfectly combines the experience of the tablet and mobile phone,” Bin said on his post. He mentions that it is still a prototype, not the final product, but it is polished enough to show in public.

The Instagram-ratio tablet folds on two sides, top and bottom, getting into a rather compact phone size — much smaller than any standard soap bar phones. When extended it looks very thin, but folded it’s thicker than regular models.

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Bin says that the company had to come up with its own hinge technology to fold the display (no mention of who is the panel manufacturer), the screen protective material, and adapt their Android-based MIUI operating system to create the Xiaomi foldable.

Bin also said that it may be called Xiaomi Dual Flex or Xiaomi MIX Flex, although he’s open to suggestions from Weibo commenters.

There is no mention on how durable this is or folding tests statistics. Would it last enough to make its guts obsolete? And how much would this cost? We can assume it is going to be expensive but, being Xiaomi, it will probably beat Samsung and most of the foldable phones coming in 2019.

Image credits: Xiaomi

Jesus Diaz

Jesus Diaz founded the new Sploid for Gawker Media after seven years working at Gizmodo, where he helmed the lost-in-a-bar iPhone 4 story and wrote old angry man rants, among other things. He's a creative director, screenwriter, and producer at The Magic Sauce, and currently writes for Fast Company and Tom's Guide.