Finally, Xiaomi has officially taken the wraps off the Xiaomi Mi 5 smartphone. The successor to the Xiaomi Mi 4 went official at the MWC 2016 in Barcelona in what can be described as the company’s first ever global stage handset announcement.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 impresses as it has what it take to compete with other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5. It sports a curved design on the back and equipped with 5.15-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection and night vision mode for night reading.
Measuring 144.55 x 69.2 x 7.25mm in dimensions and weighing in at 129 grams, the Mi 5 has with 3D glass back (although the higher end option called the Mi 5 Pro has Ceramics back) and is backed by a 3000mAh battery that promises up to 2.5 hours of talk time on 5 minutes of charge.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor sits under the hood with clock speed between 1.85GHz – 2.15GHz along with either 3GB or 4GB of RAM and 32GB/64GB/128GB UFS 2.0 storage. There is quick charge 3.0 onboard and it runs the well known MIUI 7 OS, this time with Android Marshmallow OS.
Connectivity options on the Xiaomi Mi 5 includes NFC, VoLTE, 3 carrier aggregation 4G+ or 4G Advanced (LTE Cat.12 – up to 600Mbps download speed), Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.2. The fingerprint sensor is embedded into the home button, a first from Xiaomi.
In the camera aspect, the main camera is a 16MP snapper with SONY IMX298 sensor, f/2.0 aperture, Spectra Image Processor and Phase Detection AutoFocus (PDAF). The camera records 4K videos and 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization. The front snapper for selfies is a 4MP Ultrapixel camera.
The Base Xiaomi Mi 5 model with 3GB RAM/32GB storage costs CNY 1999; the next model with 3GB RAM/64GB storage costs CNY 2299 while the highest model (Xiaomi Mi 5 Pro with 4GB RAM/128GB) costs CNY 2699. They’ll arrive in colour options of either Black, Gold, Rose God or White while sales will begin in China on March 1st.
