Our wait has finally come to an end! Xiaomi has officially unveiled the Mi 5 flagship at its Spring Conference event today. The phone is everything we predicted it to be, featuring a premium body with powerful specs.
Now that the phone is official, here are all the details about the Xiaomi Mi 5 flagship, including the specs.
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.
As for the specs, like confirmed earlier, the Xiaomi Mi 5 will come with Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor. The new chip is manufactured on the 14nm process and comes with Adreno 530 GPU, Hexagon 680 DSP, X12 LTE modem and support for Quick Charge 3.0. The new chip basically doubles the performance while cutting down the energy consumption to half.
There will be two different memory variants available, one with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, which is the standard version. The other, high-end edition will come with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. The company adds that these are the UFS 2.0 high-speed flash memories, which is reportedly 87% faster than traditional memory standards. During the presentation, the company revealed that the 4GB + 128GB version of the Xiaomi Mi 5 scored an impressive 142, 084 on AnTuTu.
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.
At the back, you get a powerful 16MP camera with 6P lens and 4-axis OIS to make sure the pictures turn out to be blur free. This is probably why we saw CEO Lei Jun’s Mi 5 take great shots of the bird in motion. Throughout the presentation, the company compared the Xiaomi Mi 5’s camera with the iPhone 6S Plus to show that it was superior.
The camera is particularly the highlight of the Mi 5, as the company as used a new DTI pixel isolation tech on the device. This reportedly allows for greater utilization of light, thereby reducing noise and improving picture quality. As for the front camera, it’s a 4MP sensor with 2-micron pixels for better selfies.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 comes with VoLTE with a maximum download speed of 600Mbps. The high-density battery inside is of 3000mAh with QC 3.0 support. You can charge the phone for just 5 minutes and get up to 2.5 hours of talk time! Other notable connectivity features include dual SIM dual standby, VoLTE, Infrared Port and NFC.
As for the pricing, the phone starts at 1999 Yuan ($306) for the 3GB + 32GB version (Glass Body + [email protected]), 2299 Yuan ($352) for 3GB + 64GB (Ceramic body + faster clocked SD820 @2.15GHz) and goes up to 2699 Yuan ($413) for the high-end 4GB + 128GB variant (Ceramic body + [email protected]). These are some pretty aggressive pricing for a flagship of this level!
The phone goes on sale on March 1 at Mi.com.
So, what do you think? Are you impressed?
Meanwhile, check out these articles for more Xiaomi Mi 5 coverage:
Xiaomi Mi 5 vs Le Max Pro: Quick Specs Comparison
Xiaomi Mi 5 vs iPhone 6S Plus: Camera Samples Compared
Xiaomi Mi 4S vs Xiaomi Mi 4: Specs Compared
