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So this is not. an iPhone Duo. This is the Xiaomi 18. Fold. What you're looking at is a folding phone with the exact same dimensions as the iPhone Duo, the exact same aspect ratio for the inside screen and, and the outside screen. It has a lot of the same features as the iPhone Duo, including this D-shaped display, but. it has also one-upped it in several really key ways. I just want to start by answering a question that a lot of people get wrong on the Internet right now, which is just, how does this happen?
How do we have the iPhone Duo getting unveiled on September 9, 2026, but this Xiaomi Fold was officially unveiled two days earlier, on September 6, 7th, 2026? There are people saying, "Wow, Apple actually copied Xiaomi." But then a whole bunch of other people saying, "No, no, no, Xiaomi did still copy Apple, even though it came out first." But we also know that the development cycle of these tech products is. many, many, many months, usually years. And yet. somehow these phones got unveiled two days from each other. So here's the deal.
We know that these tech companies are very, very competitive. They're also very, very, very secretive. So a company like Apple, if they can help it, is going to try to develop their new products in complete secrecy as long as possible. so they can surprise people at launch. So, of course, they've been watching the foldables market and they finally have decided to jump in. And so they start developing and working on their folding iPhone. They will have these very strict rules for people working on these really, really secretive, unannounced products just to try to keep things from leaking to the point where, like, engineers go home at the end of the day and they can't tell their families about
the thing they worked on at work that day. So things can actually stay pretty contained within Apple's walls. But eventually they have to go out and make the thing. And so they have to go out and have those conversations with parts suppliers and factories and start probing and having those conversations and placing orders of parts to actually make the thing that they designed. And those other companies are not. quite as secretive as Apple. So that's where information starts to leak. And people start to find out that. Apple needs a bunch of folding OLEDs of this size and a hinge that works in this exact way and a chassis of these exact dimensions. So that's how you end up with the new mockups and stuff with the
exact dimensions of the new iPhone. Now, software stuff, notably, doesn't leak nearly as much because it doesn't have to go through that entire supply chain. And so they're actually typically able to surprise us a little bit more with the software features. But yeah, now it's months before the release of the next iPhone and companies like Xiaomi, you know, they don't have a CAD render of the exact new iPhone that's gonna come out, but they do have enough to make. their own version of the thing and they have the advantage of speed so they can go into overdrive and commit to putting this thing together and putting it out before the predictable Apple event timing. And there's lots of examples of this happening before.
You might remember last year, literally months before the iPhone Air September announcement, we got a teaser of this ultra-thin phone that Samsung's working on. that turned out to be the S25 Edge. that came out first. Same idea. And Xiaomi, as we know, is not exactly shy about borrowing. Apple's aesthetic in an effort to try to borrow. some of their customers. So yeah, this shouldn't exactly be a shock to us. A folding phone that is to the millimeter, the exact same. height and width and same aspect ratio as Apple's folding phone. But then they actually went out and one-upped the iPhone Duo in a couple of ways too.
So if you remember my first impressions of the iPhone Duo, the passport size is nice, the shape is actually really reachable. But that is a heavy phone. It's actually the heaviest iPhone of all time, clocking in at 254 grams. And you know, it feels substantial. And I think a lot of people I'm sure will associate that weight with high quality. But what a lot of us foldables people end up liking more is, is a lighter object to hold, just less fatiguing. And this Xiaomi Fold is a whole 30 grams lighter, much closer to the weight of a normal large slab phone. And that makes a huge difference.
And they've managed to do this with a 6,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery that also supports 67-watt fast charging and 50-watt wireless charging with the right accessory. We don't know the exact battery size of the iPhone Duo yet, but if I was guessing, and this is before the. reviews that are of course coming soon, so get subscribed to see that. But if I was guessing. The battery might be either the weakest or second weakest part of that phone. Apple's famously pretty conservative with the physical battery capacity.
They're not doing silicon-carbon and they're not doing super-fast charging. And so people are estimating the Duo's battery to be somewhere around that 5,000 milliamp-hour mark combined between the two sides. That is smaller than the 18 Pro Max's battery. And we know the A20 Pro is great and everything, but there is also a massive 7-and-a-half-inch screen to power when it's open. The Z Fold 8 has the same limitation. It has a 4,800 milliamp-hour battery. And if you use it with that screen open for long enough, it just drinks battery quite a bit faster than when it's closed.
Xiaomi has never been shy about the super-high-capacity silicon-carbon batteries. And I think a folding phone is the right place to put it. It's thinner, there's less volume, you're kind of splitting it up with a hinge in the middle. But you have a huge screen. so you want it to be able to last all day. And putting 6,000 milliamp-hours in there goes a long way. But then the other thing you've probably noticed by now. is those cameras. So in case you forgot with all the hype, the iPhone Duo has two cameras.
It's a primary and an ultra-wide. There is no zoom camera. The Xiaomi Fold back here has a camera bar with triple cameras around the back. There's a 200-megapixel primary. and it has an ultra-wide and a 50-megapixel 3.5x zoom camera as well. Now we already know these foldables don't have the most Z-depth. They're ultra-thin because they're split in half on both sides. So that's why there's no Face ID on the iPhone Duo. Not enough room for it. And so there also is always that challenge of not having a lot of room for actual flagship-sized, large camera sensors.
But it does feel like Xiaomi still found a way. to one-up the iPhone, at least on paper. I think our best guess for the iPhone Duo's camera is it's probably the iPhone 17E's main camera. You know, the descriptions on Apple's site are exactly the same for 48 megapixels Hybrid Focus Pixels. That sensor is much smaller than the one Xiaomi is using. It's a 1/2.55-inch sensor and Xiaomi has a 200-megapixel 1/1.56-inch sensor. So you know, TBD on how well the iPhone Duo's camera actually performs and if the A20 Pro's image signal processor can squeeze anything more out of it. But you know, you can at least guaranteed give Xiaomi the win in the zoom department. for having a dedicated zoom camera. And I'll also throw in that I find this pretty.
this little camera bar is kind of nice to hold when I'm using the phone in portrait. It's kind of like a little handle. Probably smudging this a lot also, but. it's nice. On the inside screen, you probably remember the iPhone hid their selfie camera underneath the display. Xiaomi just went ahead with a standard hole-punch cutout in the corner, which, I mean, that's gonna win by default for image quality. I don't really mind it in the corner up here either. It's out of the way. Obviously the big dramatic uninterrupted surface with no crease and no cutouts is cool and it resembles the iPad. But yeah, there's a cutout here with Xiaomi.
Now the Xiaomi does have a bit more crease. here. It's not terrible, but there is no anti-glare finish and it can sometimes catch your eye once in a while. But it's definitely not problematic. Like if the Duo. and the Find N6 are 9 out of 10 for a crease delete, this is at a 7. But there's also one more big difference between these phones, which is that thing that doesn't really leak nearly as much, that software. You know, that's why things like that opening and closing glassy animation that Apple pulled off actually took us all by surprise and. makes us feel a really big difference in how responsive and nice it feels to use an iPhone Duo.
Now Android folding phones have also had these screen opening and closing animations for a while now, but there are some differences. First of all, when you close. basically any Android folding phone, the default behavior is to just assume that you're done with it and you're shutting it. And if you want to continue, then you have to act. You have to either swipe or wake up the outside display. And I've been using foldables for a while. I've really gotten used to that behavior.
The iPhone does not do that. As soon as you're halfway done closing it, it lights up the outside display to maintain this sort of fluid continuity with the animation. And I don't hate that. But I want to point out two things that the Android foldable software has that. I'm just wondering when the iPhone Duo will eventually add. So number one, more windows at once. Like, these are gonna be multitasking machines. iPhone Duo famously only lets you do two apps side by side. And that's it. The Android world is full of multi-window, bubble window, overlay, triple-app multitasking, all sorts of crazy stuff everywhere, as if you have a full-size tablet.
and, you know, two screens side by side is not bad, but maybe there'll be a third at some point. But then, two. So this is something. MrMobile brought up a few times with these folds is the camera. So when you're taking a photo of yourself using the primary cameras, that back screen. these phones all specifically disable. the back screen to prevent accidental touches. It's very clever. They've all kind of realized that this is a smart thing to do. The iPhone Duo actually doesn't seem to do this. And it would kind of shock me if they didn't realize sooner or later that they should do this. But we haven't seen that yet.
That is definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on. Also, I am excited to finally announce. that the desk pad. that we've made is finally actually on sale. We collaborated with Omnitype, so if you know, you know. And we designed this brand new desk pad and I think it's awesome. It's large, it's 4 millimeters thick. It has this nice stitching around the edges and rubber at the bottom to keep it soundly in place. And there's actually two versions of this on the site. For those of you who really know ball, there's smooth and rough. Smooth will feel like a normal mousepad.
Rough is. has a little texture to it for more precise movements, if you're into that. I think if you just want something you're familiar with, smooth is probably the way to go. But I really like the rough. All the mouse pads I use have that texture. So if, you know, if you want that, you can get it. But yeah, we're very happy to finally be launching this. It's. It's on the site on mkbhd.com you can get one starting literally today, which is super sick. Let me know. Shout out me on Twitter if you actually get one, what you think of it. Send me those pictures.
I want to see them. But either way, that's it. Thank you for watching. Welcome to Techtober. And I'll see you very soon in the next one. Peace.
