At MWC, Xiaomi of China has launched its flagship smartphone, Mi 5. This next generation of smartphone is packed with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with up to 4GB RAM and 128GB flash memory.
Mi 5 will ship in three models and three colors: black, white and gold. Mi 5 32GB (Snapdragon 820 1.8GHz, 3GB + 32GB, 3D ceramic glass) will be available for RMB1,999 ($305 OR Roughly Rs. 21,000), Mi 5 64GB (Snapdragon 820 2.15GHz, 3GB + 64GB, 3D ceramic glass) for RMB2,299 and Mi 5 Pro (Snapdragon 820 2.15GHz, 4GB + 128GB, 3D ceramic body) for RMB2,699.
The sale of this device will start in China from 1st March and it will be launched in global markets at a later date.
The Mi 5 builds upon the design language of Mi Note. It has curved edges and a slim metal frame with a 3D ceramic body which is claimed to be strong and durable with the texture of marble.
The Mi 5 sports a 5.15-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels. It is very light device as it weighs only 129g and has a thickness of only 7.25mm. The Mi 5 has a high screen-to-body ratio, which was made possible only by an innovative structural design that was nearly two years in development as stated by the company in its presentation.
The Mi 5 is driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, which has double the performance of Snapdragon 810 at half the power consumption. It comes with the Adreno 530 GPU which is 40% faster and 40% more power efficient than the Adreno 510. Mi 5 is also the first Xiaomi smartphone to ship with UFS 2.0 high-speed flash memory, which is designed to greatly surpass the performance of eMMC 5.0 by up to 87%, as claimed by the company.
The Mi 5 is equipped with 16MP rear camera with a Sony IMX298 sensor, Dual-tone LED flash, PDAF, 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), and 4K video recording. It also houses a 4 megapixel front camera with 2um pixel size.
This phone is packed wit 3000 mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0, which can charge up to 90% in just one hour, and is able to give two and a half hours of talktime after charging for just 5 minutes.
The Mi 5 also comes with front fingerprint sensor. It supports the next-generation 4G+ network (Cat 12) and VoLTE and full NFC functionality for both reading and writing. The Mi 5 runs Xiaomi’s newest MIUI7 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun said: “Mi 5 is truly all you ever imagined, and more. Our latest flagship has been in the making for 19 months, and it’s the most beautiful device we have unveiled so far. With several tech breakthroughs built into Mi 5, it is insanely fast. I am extremely excited to start 2016 on such a strong note, and I’m really looking forward to unveiling even more amazing products in the year to come.”
