Xiaomi President Lu Weibing today announced that the Mix Fold 3 is coming in August. He responded with the news to a question on Weibo, in the comments of a post he made about Xiaomi's latest factory upgrade.
The new Smart Factory was officially launched and the first model it will mass produce will be exactly the Mix Fold 3. Apparently there have been a lot of upgrades in terms of manufacturing systems to ensure that the Mix Fold 3 can be thinner and stronger at the same time. It will also have Leica-branded cameras, unsurprisingly.
The Mix Fold 2 launched in August of last year, so it seems like that month is now more or less a tradition for new Xiaomi foldables arriving. That model is 11.2mm thick in its folded state. That was already mind-blowing (for Samsung, especially), but it seems that Xiaomi has somehow managed to make the Mix Fold 3 even thinner than that.
The bad news, according to a very recent rumor, is that the Mix Fold 3 will apparently stay confined to China just like its predecessor, not getting an official international launch. That would be a pity, but we're used to Chinese companies being afraid to take their foldables outside of their home market - it's been a trend over the past couple of years. Only Samsung benefits from this really, and consumers lose, but it is what it is.
The Mix Fold 3 has been rumored to come with an under-display selfie camera on the main folding screen, a 5x periscope zoom lens on the back, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset at the helm, and support for 50W wireless charging.
