Xiaomi has officially announced its latest flagship chipset, the Xring O3, in China. Alongside the new chip, the company also confirmed that it will power its upcoming foldable smartphone, the Xiaomi 18 Fold, which is scheduled to launch in September.
Xring O3: What We Know So Far
Though the company has launched the Xring O3 today, details about it seem to be all over the place. For now, according to reports, Xiaomi is positioning it as a flagship SoC to go up against Qualcomm’s and MediaTek’s offerings. It’s worth pointing out that the brand appears to be skipping the Xring O2 name, although it has not given a reason for doing so. Reuters reports that manufacturing of the chip is handled by TSMC.
The Xring O3 is reportedly codenamed “Lhasa” and is expected to feature a new architecture, potentially using a highly optimised three-cluster CPU layout. Reports have pointed to either a 1+3+4 or 1+2+5 configuration, with the chip reportedly capable of reaching up to 4.05GHz.
It’s been alleged that its Titanium performance cores could run at up to 3.42GHz, while the efficiency cores are expected to reach 3.02GHz. The GPU is also expected to receive an increase in clock speed, from 1.2GHz on its predecessor to around 1.5GHz. Meanwhile, the memory speed could remain at 9,600 MT/s.
Meanwhile, HC Newsroom says that it’s “the world’s first mobile chipset to support LPDDR6 and delivers speeds up to 10,667Mbps with a memory bandwidth of 113.8GB/s.” Furthermore, it has a die size of 133mm² and runs on TSMC’s 3nm processor technology and has more than 24 billion transistors.
The Xring O3 also brings several changes to its AI and processing capabilities. Xiaomi has optimised the chipset for its MiMo on-device AI models, with the NPU delivering up to 200 TOPS of tensor performance and 3.13 TFLOPS of vector performance.
The company has also revamped the chip’s internal architecture to improve power efficiency and responsiveness, resulting in a claimed latency of just 82ns. Xiaomi also claims that the Xring O3 delivers a 45% increase in AI performance compared to its predecessor. The chipset also includes two CPU AI acceleration units and eight neural-network GPU accelerators to further improve its AI processing capabilities.
Rumoured Xiaomi 18 Fold
Now, coinciding with the Xring O3 announcement, Xiaomi has just released a potential teaser in the form of an image. The image in question features the company’s CEO, Lei Jun, who is holding what appears to be the upcoming Xiaomi 18 Fold.
The evidence pointing to this being a new foldable is that it features a burgundy colourway, a hue choice that we’ve never seen before on any Xiaomi device. What is interesting is that the rumour mill notes that this device will be a wide foldable like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and not a tri-fold or flip phone.
While details are scant, that doesn’t mean we know nothing about the rumour device. In a separate Weibo post, a user shared an alleged render of the device when it’s unfolded. If true, then we just received our first look up at the upcoming foldable.
Current reports state that it will feature a large 7.5 to 7.6-inch inner folding display (which makes it on par with Samsung’s wide foldable), a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and a 200MP main camera. Sources also claim that it will come with a 200MP rear camera, a 6,000mAh battery that comes with wireless charging support, and the Android 17-based HyperOS 4.
A New Tablet On The Horizon
Reports also claim that Xiaomi plans to use the SoC on an upcoming tablet called Xiaomi Pad 8S Pro. The rumour mill adds that the device might debut alongside the Xiaomi MIX Ultra. In terms of specs, it’s been alleged that the tablet will come with a 12.5-inch screen, a 12,000mAh battery, up to 16GB of RAM, a 32MP selfie camera, and a 50MP + 2MP rear camera arrangement.
With all that said, do keep in mind that these details are largely based on leaks. As such, it’s best to take this information with a healthy dose of salt. Though we have official images from the company itself, it’s best to err on the side of caution and wait for more details.
(Source: Weibo [1], [2], Notebookcheck, Nokiamob, Reuters, HC Newsroom)
