Xiaomi Mi 5
Xiaomi just revealed its flagship Mi 5
smartphone and amazed everyone at the Mobile World Congress with its
affordability. There are three versions of the phone, which is geared towards
the Chinese market, and will start at just US$ 306 (CNY 2000).
For that price, you get Snapdragon 820
chipset, 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. If you want 64GB of internal
storage, the price goes up to US$ 352 (CNY 2300). Finally, the Xiaomi Mi 5 Pro
with ceramic back will have 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for the price of US$ 413 (CNY 2700).
The Xiaomi Mi 5 comes with a trendy
curved design on the back much like the Xiaomi Mi Note. In fact, the exterior
of the Mi5 is heavily inspired by the Mi Note, which is very popular among
fans.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 is equipped with a
5.15-inch IPS display with a 1080p resolution, ultra-bright 16-LED backlighting
(as opposed to 12LEDs), and almost no side bezels for an exquisite look.
Sunlight Display technology is upgraded as well and promises contrast
adjustment on a per-pixel level.
Below the screen there is a physical home
button, which is also a fingerprint reader. This is actually a first for
Xiaomi.
The elegant body of the Mi 5 measures
exactly 69.20 x 144.55 x 7.25 mm, so it's just a tad thicker than the Mi Note.
It is also surprisingly light, tipping the scale at 129 grams with a 3D glass back
and including the fairly big 3,000 mAh battery.
While the regular version will have a
glass back, there will also be a higher-end ceramic back option called Xiaomi
Mi5 Pro.
A recurring theme during the
presentation was speed. The phone is allegedly fast on a whole different level.
In part, this is thanks to Qualcomm's top of the line Snapdragon 820 SoC. This
is backed up by 3 GB or 4 GB of fast LPDDR4 RAM for a snappy Android experience.
Interestingly enough, the entry level 32GB one has a clock speed of 1.8 GHz and
3 GB of RAM, the 64 GB has the same amount of memory and a processor speed of
2.15 GHz. The Pro simply adds another gig of RAM. Storage has also received a
major upgrade with a focus on speed. Instead of using eMMC, the Xiaomi Mi 5 can
be picked up with up to 128 GB of UFS 2.0 memory, which promises significant
increases of 80% and more over eMMC 5.0. The Snapdragon 820 chip also supports Quick Charge 3.0.
The camera setup on the Xiaomi Mi5 is
also very impressive at 16 MP with an aperture of f/2.0 and 4-axis optical image
stabilization, which is a brand new technology as well. The sensor itself is
the Sony IMX 298, which comes with phase detection auto focus and deep trench
isolation technology. It is a worthy shooter for a 2016 flagship, and
interestingly enough, Xiaomi has managed to fully tuck it inside the body, so
there is no camera bump. Naturally, in combination with the powerful Snapdragon
820 chip, it can record 4K video as well. On the front, we have a 4 MP
UltraPixel camera - lifted from the Mi Note.
There is also a significant increase in
network connectivity. Thanks to technologies like 3x Carrier aggregation, the
onboard 4G+ or 4G Advanced is capable of theoretical Cat.12 LTE speeds of up to
600 Mbps. VoLTE is also included. NFC is now also smarter with card
virtualization and write mode.
Pre-orders for the Xiaomi Mi 5 are
currently open in China and the release date for the device is March 1.
