Xiaomi’s first foldable phone folds into three parts
Folding only in half is for simpler phones, it seems.
2019's big technology trend – or at the very least, its most hyped – is lining up to be foldable phones, with heavy hitters such as Samsung and Huawei already set to launch foldable devices this calendar year.
Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi has shown off its engineering sample of a foldable phone on Weibo, and it's rather different to the single fold models that have been shown off to date. Instead, the Weibo foldable phone – yet to be named – folds in three parts, with the "top" and "bottom" of the screen folding behind the body if you want a more compact device.
As the Verge notes, it's just an engineering sample running Xiaomi's own MIUI firmware on top of Android.
While we've never seen a Xiaomi phone launch here officially in Australia, a number of direct importers do sell Xiaomi phones direct to consumers.
That won't automatically make a Xiaomi phone a wise buy for the Australian market, due to the precise frequency bands used by the device. Plenty of phones for the Chinese domestic market, including specific China-only variants of Apple's iPhones, lack the band support for full 4G access in Australia.
With Mobile World Congress in Barcelona only a month away, we're expecting to see more hype around foldable phones, as well as new phone concepts generally.
Samsung has already announced its launch date for the Samsung Galaxy S10 a week before MWC 2019 kicks off, but that could leave the MWC stage primed for more foldable phone news.
