Xiaomi has finally launched its next flagship smartphone — Mi 5. The smartphone was unveiled by CEO Lei Jun at Xiaomi’s event in Beijing. At the time of filing this story, Xiaomi is also unveiling at MWC 2016 in Barcelona. The Mi 5 goes on sale next month in China, with prices starting from 1,999 Yuan that roughly translates to Rs 20,900. Hit the break for all the details on Xiaomi’s newest flagship smartphone.
First of all, let’s take a look a the design. The phone is significantly different than its predecessor, Xiaomi Mi 4, with a rounder and smoother design. The company has used a new material on the flagship, zirconium 3D ceramic body, which it claims is 75% more expensive than traditional glass material. It’s extremely strong and resistant, up to 8 Mohs hardness. Design wise, Xiaomi has done a good job keeping the Mi 5 sleek and compact, the camera sensor flat (not protruding) and light weight. Oh yes, its super light weighing only 129 grams!! As for the dimensions, the phone 144.55 x 69.20 x 7.25mm.
For the first time, Xiaomi will be using a physical home button up front integrated with a fingerprint sensor. The company says that the sensor is super fast, but we don’t yet have an official unlock time for the sensor.
Xiaomi Mi 5 variants and prices:
The Mi 5 has been launched in three variants. The base model priced at 1,999 Yuan features 32GB storage, 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset paired with 3GB of RAM. The mid-variant priced at 2,299 Yuan (Rs 24,100 approximately) features 64GB storage, and 2.15GHz Snapdragon 820 chipset paired with 3GB of RAM. Finally, the top model is priced at 2,699 Yuan (Rs 28,300 approximately), and it features 128GB storage and 2.15GHz Snapdragon 820 chipset paired with 4GB of RAM.
As confirmed by the company before, the Mi 5 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chipset. The processor is paired with LPDDR4 RAM, which the company claims is much nearly 100 times faster than LPDDR3. During the presentation, Xiaomi revealed that the top-end 128GB variant scored an impressive 142,084 on AnTuTu benchmarks.
On the photography front, the Mi 5 is equipped with a 16-megapixel rear camera with Sony IMX298 sensor and 4K video recording capabilities. It also features PDAF, 4-axis OIS and dual-tone LED flash. Up front, there is a 4-megapixel selfie camera with 2-micron pixels for better selfies.The Mi 5 also has a fingerprint scanner embedded into the home button up front. The company has however only said that the scanner is super-fast. While no official time has been revealed, the fingerprint scanner on the Redmi Note 3 can unlock the phablet in just around 0.3 seconds.
Connectivity options, as revealed before boasts dual-SIM card slots, as well as 4G LTE with VoLTE support. Xiaomi promises support for download speeds up to 600Mbps.
As for the display, the phone sports a beautiful 5.15-inch display with Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution.The bezels are super thin and the screen features ultra-low power bright backlit LEDs for better display quality. In fact, Xiaomi has 21 patents for the display on Mi 5, for things like sunlight screen, negative high contrast LCD tech etc.
Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, IR Blaster, USB Type-C port and NFC. On the software front, the Mi 5 runs on the latest Android Marshmallow wrapped under MIUI 7. It also supports video calling by default, which is something similar to Apple’s Facetime. But it also comes with support for real-time Beautification and Multitasking.
The phone goes on sale on March 1 at Mi.com.
