Huawei has made waves with its new Mate XT. It’s the largest foldable smartphone to date, with dual hinges and a gigantic 10.2-inch display. It may have been the first brand to hit the market, but it’s not the only one working on super-sized foldables, with a Xiaomi tri-fold potentially on the way.
Rumors suggest Xiaomi could unveil its own triple foldable phone at MWC next year, and thanks to a freshly uncovered patent (via GSMArena), we have a much better idea of what that’ll look like compared to the best foldable phones already on the market. The tech brand filed the patent back in December 2022, and it follows the same basic design principle as the Huawei Mate XT. There’s one large foldable display with two hinges, and it folds in a Z-shape. This means there’s no cover display; instead, the flexible panel is on the outside of the phone.
This means it’ll have the same durability drawbacks as Huawei’s efforts. Foldable screen protectors are getting better, but you can only go so strong before you hamper the folding abilities. On the plus side, a Xiaomi tri-fold won’t have the same OS limitations as a Huawei device, and it’ll be much more compatible with Google services, just like the rest of the best Xiaomi phones.
Interestingly, Xiaomi had an even older patent for a tri-fold phone way back in 2019. It was much more ambitious and required the hinges to fold both ways, something that’s unlikely to work well in real-world conditions. Barring some drastic technological advancements, I don’t think we’ll be seeing this design anytime soon.
Xiaomi’s not alone in its tri-fold efforts, either. We’ve seen concept devices from Samsung Display, TCL, TECNO, and Oppo. Microsoft even filed a patent for a dual-hinged foldable Surface phone at one point. If you like the idea of an XXL foldable, 2025 could be shaping up to be an interesting year.