Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Britain’s spy agencies have signed a deal where AWS will be hosting classified material to boost the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) for espionage.

The Financial Times report added that the GCHQ agency had supported the procurement of a high-security cloud system, which would be used by its sister services, MI5 and MI6. Other government departments such as the ministry of defence during joint operations will also be using the system during joint operations.

AWS is the cloud service unit of Amazon and the AI espionage agreement was signed this year. All data will be held in Britain itself though.

When asked, GCHQ said that it will not be commenting on reports concerning its relationships with its suppliers. AWS declined to comment on the report.

Earlier this year, Britain’s cyber spies at the GCHQ eavesdropping agency announced that it had fully embraced artificial intelligence to identify patterns in massive volumes of global data in order to combat hostile disinformation and apprehend child abusers.

GCHQ has been using basic forms of AI such as translation technology for years but is now ramping up its usage in an effort to compete with hostile governments’ use of AI and also because of the data explosion that makes it effective.

Jeremy Fleming, Director of GCHQ had also earlier on Monday told a conference the number of ransomware attacks had doubled across the UK in 2021, compared to last year.

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Xiaomi has been on a roll recently and the Mi5s Plus is one of the most powerful and beautiful smartphones the company has ever made. It costs just $400 but given its spec-sheet, the phone can rival even the most expensive flagships. Is this the case? Learn more in the full Gizmochina’s review.

Thanks to Oppomart for sending the Xiaomi Mi5s Plus for a review.

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: VIDEO REVIEW

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: UNBOXING

In the box, you can find all the usual items you would expect to come with any phone. A nice touch is the included hard plastic case to protect your investment.

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: SPECS

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: DESIGN and DISPLAY

As the name implies, the Mi5s Plus is a larger phone that the regular Mi5s and that is mainly due to its 5.7” 1080p display. It would have been nice to have a 2k resolution panel but the display is still plenty sharp, bright and detailed.

We have nicely backlit capacitive buttons and a highly customizable notification LED light, which sits next to the 4MP Ultrapixel selfie camera.

The device looks and feels like an expensive phone. It is all-metal (except for the top and bottom parts for antennas).

Also, the build quality is top-notch. There are no moving parts or rattling buttons and it is just nice to hold the phone in the hand despite its huge footprint.

The Mi5s Plus has 2 13MP cameras with f/2.0 aperture and PDAF. The first is a regular shooter and the other is a monochrome sensor that takes images in black and white. We also have a dual tone dual-LED flash for night photography. However, there is no OIS onboard, which is a shame for the Xiaomi’s flagship phone.

Just below the camera setup, we have a super fast and accurate fingerprint sensor that can unlock your phone straight from the standby mode.

I really like the balanced and rich sound that is coming out of the loudspeaker, which can also get pretty loud.

The Xiaomi brought the IR blaster back to control the devices like TVs. The sound via the headset jack is pretty good too.

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus design gallery:

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

The Xiaomi Mi5s Plus packs some serious hardware components that sound very impressive on paper.

I have the high-end model that sports a brand new Snapdragon 821 chip, 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM and whopping 128GB UFS 2.0-based storage.

You can also opt in for a lower-end model that has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It’s actually a bit funny that we are talking about the lower-end model with these kind of specs.

As expected, the 3D gaming performance is just excellent. No matter what kind of games you play on the Mi5s Plus, the phone just flies and it is just a pleasure to play games on a huge display. Finally, the phone does not have any overheating issues. See a video review for gaming performance.

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: BENCHMARKS

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: USER INTERFACE

The Xiaomi Mi5s Plus ships with the Android 6.0-based MIUI 8 that we have already seen on other Xiaomi phones. As usual, we have a ton of customization options, various settings, tweaks and little features to make the phone look your own.

Some of the cool features include a baked-in theming engine, where you can choose from a lot of themes, fonts, wallpapers and so on. Also, you can go to the so-called second space, which is as Xiaomi says “like having two devices” at the same time. In other words, it is like having two accounts.

However, you have to know that the Chinese version of the phone comes with quite a few bloatware apps that may be annoying. A great thing is that you can easily remove most of them.

Finally, I’m fairly impressed with how fast the Mi5s Plus  is despite having all those features. The phone is fast, fluid and I didn’t have any hiccups or lag.

Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review: CAMERA and IMAGE/VIDEO QUALITY

IT IS HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED TO DOWNLOAD FULL RESOLUTION CAMERA SAMPLES TO SEE THE ACTUAL IMAGE QUALITY. THE PICTURES UPLOADED ON THE WEBSITE ARE 50% SMALLER IN RESOLUTION.

We have the usual Xiaomi camera app, which allows you to take the pictures very fast and you can play with quite a few shooting modes and settings.

The stereo mode should utilize both sensors at the same time and that is supposed to give you better quality photos in terms of saturation, contrast, and exposure. I took quite a few pictures side by side in auto-mode and the dual-camera mode and tried to analyze the differences.

In my eyes, the stereo mode does help in quite a few situations that lead to a better saturation, contrast, and exposure in most of the shots. However, the results are not always that noticeable and sometimes the auto-HDR mode can take pictures that are more pleasing to the eye.

Where the dual camera setup really shines is the low-light. All the pictures I took in the stereo mode look simply better as there is a lot less noise and more detail.

You can also use the mono mode, which utilizes the monochrome sensor for high-quality black/white pictures. I’m not a huge fan of black/white photography but I have to say that I love the results.

The last mode worth mentioning is the manual mode, where you can adjust quite a few settings if you feel creative.

As for image quality, the phone can take some nice-looking daylight images. They are not on par with the more expensive flagships but they still have natural-looking colors, look pretty sharp and detailed for a $400 phone. See a camera video review for side-by-side comparison with the Samsung Galaxy s7 edge.

Also, I’m happy that the auto-HDR mode does a pretty good job bringing out the detail to the shadows.However, I was a bit frustrated that the camera can’t capture a sharp image when the object is moving, e.g. the flower that is being blown by the wind.

The Panorama mode allows you to take some pretty nice panoramic photos. The stitching seems to be pretty good but some of the objects look blown out.

As for indoor shots, where the lighting conditions are far from the best, we see quite a bit of noise and less detail but in general, the images look pretty nice.

When it comes to the low-light photography if you use only the main 13MP sensor, the images  definitely have less detail and more noise than the top-tier flagships but I would say that the Mi5s does a pretty good job considering it’s price tag. As I mentioned before, utilizing two cameras at the same time really help improve the low-light image quality.

The 4MP selfie shooter can take some really nice pictures that will be more than enough for the social media.

The Xiaomi Mi5s Plus can shoot 4k videos that are very sharp and detailed, and the colors look nice. I’m pretty happy with the way the continuous auto-focus works but sometimes it can be a little jumpy. Since the phone lacks OIS, the footage may look a little shaky.

However, my biggest frustration is the fact that there are quite a lot of video compression artifacts. The audio quality suffers from the compression too. The 1080p videos look pretty nice but they have less detail. Again, it would have been nice to have the OIS to reduce the shakiness.

The night 4k video looks very dark since the f/2.0 aperture is not able to capture enough light. Also, there is quite a bit of noise but besides that, the footage looks good.

I could not properly test the 720p slow-motion video or 1080/120fps since I’m sick at the moment. The slow-motion video looks quite good but I wish there was a bit more detail.

As for selfie video, the phone can shoot at 1080p. The footage looks quite good and it will be definitely enough for most of the users. However, I don’t like the aggressive auto-exposure and inaccurate white balance adjustment. See a detailed camera video review for the video samples.

Download full resolution camera samples

Xiaomi Mi5s Review: CONNECTIVITY

The Mi5s Plus comes with a dual nano SIM card tray but there is no microSD card slot.

When it comes to connectivity, I didn’t have any issues with the call quality, Wifi, Bluetooth or GPS.

Xiaomi Mi5s Review: BATTERY LIFE

The 3800mAh battery supports Quick Charge 3.0 but the phone does not ship with the fast charger.

As for battery life, the phone will get you through the day even if you are a heavy user and you will get at least two full days if you are a light user. I could get over 5 hours of SOT when I used the phone very intensively and I would say this is a very good result.

Xiaomi Mi5s Review: CONCLUSIONS

The Xiaomi Mi5s Plus is very solid $400 phone. It brings a lot of flagship values like a premium design and top-notch build quality, nice and sharp display, bleeding-edge specifications and a very capable dual-camera setup.

Sure, the camera is not quite up there with the most expensive flagships but it performs very well in most of the situations. If you add a feature-rich MIUI 8 user interface and a great battery life, the Xiaomi Mi5s Plus is definitely one of the best $400 phones you can buy at the moment.

The post Xiaomi Mi5s Plus Review – The Xiaomi Monster Phone appeared first on Gizmochina.

It looks like sellers in China are currently offering to upgrade the memory inside the Xiaomi Mi5 to 6GB for just 285 Yuan (~$43). Further, to show that upgrading the RAM works well on the new device, they even have released a few images (added below) wherein the phone detects 6GB RAM inside. And if you are worried about whether it will work in the long run, these guys are even offering 180 days chip warranty.

RELATED: Xiaomi Mi5S to feature advanced pressure sensitive display

Of course, we would always caution you from doing such a thing, as it will void your warranty. Plus, we can’t be entirely sure whether such an upgrade works perfectly fine. So, we better wait for reviews of the phone after the upgrade.

But what do you think? Will you take the risk of upgrading the RAM inside the Mi5 to 6GB under $50?

The post Sellers in China Offering 6GB RAM Upgrade to the Xiaomi Mi5 appeared first on Gizmochina.

One of the biggest problems with Xiaomi was not product quality or even specifications, rather it was the unavailability of its devices in the market. The company used to unveil great smartphones but once launched, the phone was hard to get, since the stock never seemed to be enough. As a result, the company has been severely criticized for its ready stock availability and we have seen competitors like OPPO and Vivo beating Xiaomi in terms of the shipments sold during the first quarter of 2016.

This was indeed a worrisome issue for the company as well as fans, which is why Lei Jun, the CEO of Xiaomi took it personally upon himself to head the supply department of the company. Looks like, that was a brilliant move, since Xiaomi is now said to be doing quite well in terms of smartphone shipments.

Earlier today, the secretary of the Chinese smartphone alliance revealed on Weibo that Xiaomi’s shipments have improved. In fact, the company seems to be shipping around 6 million smartphones every month in the second quarter of 2016. This is finally great news considering that fans can purchase Xiaomi’s smartphones right after its announcement. Well, at least the Redmi 3S was up for purchase after its announcement, and to be honest, it sold pretty well during JD.com’s grand sale. Even Xiaomi Mi5 is now available for open purchase.

RELATED: Xiaomi Redmi 4 Rumored to come with Helio X20

Given that Xiaomi has finally managed to stabilize its shipments, we can expect the upcoming beasts — Xiaomi Mi5S and the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 to be in stock after the announcement. I don’t think Xiaomi can afford to make the same mistake as it did with the Mi5 earlier this year, which did hurt the company in terms of sales. So, when these two powerful flagships are announced sometime later in 2016, we can hope that the company readies a very good amount of stock to satisfy the demand from its fans.

The post Xiaomi’s Shipments Increase In Q2 2016, Thanks To Lei Jun appeared first on Gizmochina.

The post Inventec To Boost Xiaomi Mi 5’s Production, Helps Increase Capacity To 1 Million Per Month appeared first on Gizmochina.

Once the Xiaomi Mi4 was launched some of the users were happy about it, but some of them not. It was that the company changed the design (made it more iPhoneish to get more recognition), but the specs did not have a huge bump. It seems that Xiaomi is not repeating the same mistake again as the rumours suggest that the Mi5 will have some bleeding edge specs.

One of the Chinese tech bloggers shared some info about the upcoming device on the popular Chinese social network Weibo.

Specifically, the new Xiaomi Mi5 is said to have a 5.2 inches screen, it will be  equipped with the Snapdragon 810 chip and have an embedded finger print scanner. What is more, other part of the specs is said to be no slouch either. That includes 4GB of RAM, 16MP camera with OIS, at least 3000mAh capacity battery and so on.

Although many Chinese smartphone makers usually make larger screen devices, Xiaomi should stick with the 5.2 inch screen as they want to differentiate it from the Mi Note devices lineup.

It seems that we are yet to see another amazing device from the Apple of China (like this name or not). All of these rumoured specs sound possible as we have already seen Mi Note Pro. Also, we expect to see a premium build and design. Finally, there is one question that keeps us wondering is the price. Will the Xiaomi stick to the super cheap devices strategy or make it more expensive?

The post Xiaomi Mi5 Specs Leaked! A Huge improvement! appeared first on Gizmochina.

After the release of Mi Note in January, Xiaomi would be releasing Xiaomi Mi5 in the fifth season this year.

Analyst, panjiutang just broke the news on the weibo, For the next 6 months, There will not be any flagship from Xiaomi, Mi5 will release in Q4 this year.

In addition, Pan Jiutang also revealed some information Mi Note productivity, he said existing Mi Note has cover problem, so it will not have much capacity to improve.

Subsequently, Lei Jun’s weibo forwarded Pan Jiutang confirmed Note millet production capacity argument. He said that the production of 3D curved glass cover of Mi5 complexity is high indeed and is currently fully resolved.

You can check his weibo here

Source

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Xiaomi has been on the rumour mill lately as it may release some new devices on January 15th. One of these devices may be the long awaited Mi5, the successor of the Mi4.

The Xiaomi devices have been known to offer pretty good cameras and we expect the Mi5 to be even better to compete to the top of the line flagship devices. The future upcoming device is rumoured to have a 13mp sensor (most likely made by Sony).

This time around we have some fresh photo samples, which were allegedly taken using the Xiaomi Mi5. Let’s take a look.

These pictures are said to be leaked by the Xiaomi’s co-founder. All of the above pictures carry the Xiami Mi5 name in the EXIF information, which leads us to believe that it may be a real deal. In addition, these pictures were taken on December 7th and December 11, with a resolution of 4208×3120, which makes us think that Xiaomi’s Mi5 will retain the 13mp camera.

What is more, the pics were taken in the daylight and so far we can say that colours and detail level is quite good, the macro performance is quite good as well. Since we do not have any night photos, we cannot say how the device handles the noise during complicated shooting scenarios.

According to some other news, Xiami Mi5 will be available in two colors, front and back will be made ​​of glass materials, it will spot a 5.2-inch screen with 2.5D glass, the frame will be made of aluminium alloy, the back shell will have a certain arc .

Besides great camera, the previous rumours suggest that the device is said to offer a great pack of the specs, which include Snapdragon 805 chip, 3 or even 4 GB of Ram, 16/64 GB of storage, 5.5 inches display, which is said to have 2k resolution, 4 G LTE and other great features.

The post Xiaomi Mi5 Real Photo Samples Leak! appeared first on Gizmochina.

Xiaomi had confirmed that Xiaomi Mi5 may be introduced at CES 2015, there are a lot of leaks and rumors about the Xiaomi Mi5 spreading on the internet. Let me collect them into a list.

1, Screen:  China’s Weibo user @ 包子玩机 leaked that Mi5 will have a 2.5D curved glass screen like iPhone6, Samsung Galaxy Note4, Nokia Lumia and IUNI U3, so 2.5D screen must be 2015’s trend like Snapdragon 801 in 2014. And there are rumors said Mi5 will have 5.7 inch display with 2K resolution. Since more and more smartphones will reach to 2K resolution, 2K resolution might become the basic feature of a flagship. And even Dakele is applying sapphire screen and promote the Dakele 3 with this feature, so will Xiaomi Mi5 have  sapphire screen?

2 CPU: From what we had know Xiaomi will be powered with the latest 64 bit Snapdragon 810,2.0Ghz, Qualcomm said Snapdragon 810 will be shipped at January of 2015. So there must be several phones with Snapdragon 810 be released together with Mi5. 3, RAM: 3GB RAM had been applied as the basic specification of 2014’s Android flagships. With the 64 bit CPU Xiaomi may use 4 GB RAM on their flagship of 2015.

4, Fingerprint scanner:  Since Huawei and Meizu are showing off how close their their Fingerprint scanner with iPhone’s, how can Mi5 have no Fingerprint scanner? And there is rumor said Mi5 has Fingerprint scanner.

5, Camera: Snapdragon does support 5500 megapixel camera, so whether Mi5 will use 16 megapixel or 20 megapixel camera is still unknown.

6, Others: From what we can see, Xiaomi is no longer keen on a price war, they began to focus on user experience and the over all design language. We are believing Mi5 will be designed more beautiful than Mi4, ang there might be a Mi5 and Mi5 plus.

7, Price: If Mi5 is really powered with Snapdragon 801 and 2K display, it must be priced above RMB1999($325).

8, Real phone’s pictures:   I really doubt this is the real Xiaomi Mi5 cause it really looks like Huawei Mate7.

From what I said above: Xiaomi Mi5 will have 5.7inch 2K  2.5D curved glass screen display protected by sapphire, snapdragon 810, 16 megapixel or 20 megapixel camera, and maybe Android 5.0 based MIUI? It will have fingerprint scanner and a much greater design? If that is true, Mi5 must be the best Xiaomi Phone from then.

[socialpoll id=”2235952″]

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