Xiaomi is the Chinese company that constantly challenges the concept of flagship smartphones by producing some devices that have top-shelf specs, premium design and a very low price. The Mi 5s is one of those phones. How does it stack up against the  8 month old Samsung Galaxy S7 edge? Learn more in our comparison review.

VIDEO REVIEW

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE0KJ4G7vy4[/embedyt]

PRICE

First of all, the price. The prices of the Mi 5s start at about $330 via the third part resellers. The Galaxy s7 edge still costs at least as twice as much despite the fact it was released back in March.

In addition, please check out our in-depth Xiaomi Mi 5s review and Samsung Galaxy S7 edge review for more details.

DESIGN

When it comes to the design, we have a little bit different approaches here but let’s talk about the similarities first.

Both phones look and feel premium but the Mi 5s has unibody metal design as opposed to the glass on the S7 edge, which attracts fingerprints and smudges very easily….but you can always wash those smudges out as the Galaxy s7 edge is water resistant.

Both devices have capable selfie shooters, notification LED lights and fingerprint scanners on the front. The Mi5 s is a clear winner when it comes to fingerprint security as it is simply faster and more reliable.

The Mi 5s ships with just 5.15” 1080p display but the S7 edge is not that larger despite the fact it has a 5.5” 2k resolution panel.

Speaking of those displays, both are great but the S7 edge has a better overall panel, which looks sharper, more punchy and more visible outdoors.

When it comes to optics, we have 12MP Sony shooters on both devices. The S7 edge has an edge since it has a built-in OIS and a much brighter f/1.7 aperture as opposed to f/2.0 aperture on the Mi 5s.

As for loudspeakers, neither phone will impress you. Still, the Galaxy device has a better sound quality. Keep in mind that that S7 edge uses the micro USB port whereas the Mi 5s uses the USB type C port.

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

When it comes to hardware, things are getting interesting since the Xiaomi Mi 5s is a more powerful phone, at least on paper.

I have the high-end model that sports a brand new Snapdragon 821 chip, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and whopping 128GB UFS 2.0-based storage.

You can also opt in for a lower-end model that has 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Keep in mind, however, that only the high-end model has a pressure-sensitive display.

The Galaxy S7 edge is already 8 months old but it still rocks some impressive hardware components.

My review unit is the EU model and it sports a home-brewed octa-core Exynos 8890 chip with the clock speeds of up to 2.6GHz, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage.

As expected, both phones can handle anything you throw at them and the latest 3D just fly.

USER INTERFACE

Xiaomi and Samsung have completely different approaches when it comes to the user interface.

The Mi 5s runs on the MIUI 8, which is based on Android 6.0.

As usual, we have a ton of customization options, various settings, tweaks and little features to make the phone look your own.

One of the key features is the pressure-sensitive display, which works great with certain apps. It is not a feature I can’t live without but hey, if you get used to using it, it may increase your productivity.

The Galaxy S7 edge runs on the very familiar Touchwiz skin.

If you’ve used a Samsung device before, you will feel pretty familiar with the user interface. We have a bit cartoonish looking icons, a lot of quick settings toggles and what has become usual to the South-Korean manufacturer, quite a lot of features and customization options.

One of my favorite features is the always-on display, which makes the best out the power-efficient Amoled panel.

Both phones are pretty similar in terms of the UI performance as everything has been running smoothly without any lag.

IMAGE QUALITY

Xiaomi Mi 5s:

Galaxy s7 edge:

When it comes to the image quality, the Galaxy S7 edge is a better performer in most of the situations as the pictures usually look sharper and have more detail.

The s7 edge also tends to perform better in low-light thanks to the faster lens and OIS. Also, the Samsung phone shoots 4k videos that one of the best on any phone.

Still, the Xiaomi Mi 5s does a fairly impressive job both in picture taking and 4k video recording, and it definitely has one of the best cameras in its price range.

BATTERY LIFE

When it comes to the battery life, both phones perform great.

The Xiaomi Mi 5s has a smaller 3100mAh battery that supports Quick Charge 3.0 but the phone does not ship with the fast charger. 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. That translates to over 6 hours of screen-on time, depending on the usage.

The S7 Edge has a 3600mAh battery that can be charged using the supplied fast charger in just 1:15 mins. Also, you can charge the phone wirelessly, which is very convenient in practice.

The battery life is very similar on the Galaxy phone. You will get around 2 full days or around 5-6 hours of SOT, depending on the usage.

CONCLUSIONS

So, there you have it, Xiaomi Mi 5s vs. Galaxy S7 edge.

Obviously, the S7 edge is a better phone overall but the Xiaomi Mi 5s is no slouch at all.

Sure, the Galaxy phone has a better camera, water resistance, wireless charging, sharper display but when I say better, the gap is not always that significant.

The Mi 5s is comparable to the Galaxy S7 edge in some of the departments and it is even better in others like 128GB of on-board storage or more features in the UI.

Even though the Samsung phone has an edge, the Xiaomi Mi 5s is a very solid phone, for half the price.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5s vs Samsung Galaxy S7 edge: The $300 Difference appeared first on Gizmochina.

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.

After Huawei and Apple, most Chinese smartphone companies are reportedly working on 3D Touch enabled smartphones. While Meizu was expected to release a 3D Touch enabled smartphone earlier this year, we haven’t seen it yet. However, looks like Xiaomi could soon release a smartphone with pressure sensitive display and it could be an upcoming model like the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 or the Xiaomi Mi5S.

Recently, Xiaomi users found that 3D Touch feature was already available in their system, hidden away, probably because the hardware couldn’t support it. But given that the feature is built into the system, this could be a good indication that Xiaomi is readying a smartphone with 3D Touch display.

We have already heard rumors that Xiaomi is planning to release the Mi Note 2 in September. If the release is this month, expect more details soon.

The post Xiaomi Mi Note 2 to support 3D Touch? appeared first on Gizmochina.

Dual cameras seem to be the new trend in the market. While Huawei has embraced this technology on almost all flagship smartphones of 2016, other Chinese firms like Xiaomi are also reportedly working on dual camera smartphones scheduled for launch in the second half of 2016. And guess who’s going to supply these Chinese companies with these modules? Samsung!

According to a new report from South Korea, Samsung will start supplying dual camera modules to two major smartphone companies, namely Xiaomi and LeEco from July this year. This fits perfectly with the rumors that we have been hearing about the Xiaomi Mi5S flagship and its dual camera setup. However, these two may not be the only manufacturers getting the module from Samsung, as even OPPO, whose smartphones are doing very well in China, is said to be a potential client.

RELATED: Galaxy S8 said to feature 4K screen and dual cameras

So, it looks like the market will soon be flooded with dual camera flagships. We have already heard rumors about the Mi5S and Mi Note 2 flagships coming with this setup, and now it looks like LeEco and OPPO phones are also going to feature dual cameras. While these phones may have the same supplier, i.e. Samsung, what would be really interesting to see is the optimizations done by each company in order to improve the pictures taken from the module.

Huawei has proved that it knows how to make the best out of its dual camera module, but we will have to wait and see Xiaomi, LeEco and OPPO’s take on this setup.

Xiaomi’s first dual camera phone should be the Mi5S, and we should see the smartphone sometime in the second half of this year.

(Source)

The post Dual Cameras On Xiaomi & LeEco phones Could Be Supplied By Samsung 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.

Lin Bin revealed on Saturday that Xiaomi was all set to release a new flagship in the market in July. We guessed it would be the rumored Xiaomi Mi Note 2 as it was logically the next flagship smartphone for the company. Now, it looks like the first generation Xiaomi Mi Note is listed as sold out, which hints that the Mi Note 2 flagship release could be close by.

Apart from the details we heard earlier today, more information about the specs of the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 have cropped up online. It is said that the phone will use a 2K 5.7-inch display so that the screen resolution is high enough for Xiaomi’s VR. Another interesting piece of information revealed today is that there would be Xiaomi Mi5S announced as well, which should be a slightly upgraded version of the Mi5 flagship. Further, they should be using metal injection molding process.

As for the other specs, there should be at least two versions with 4GB and 6GB RAM, Snapdragon 821 chipset and even a variant with dual cameras. If the Note 2 indeed comes with these specs, it would be a treat for power users. Also, considering the specs, the Mi Note 2 should retail around the same price as the Honor V8, which cost upwards of 2499 Yuan (>$380).

There are also rumors about the flexible screen phone from Xiaomi with a screen size of around 5.5-5.7-inches. But not much details are available about the device yet.

The post Xiaomi Mi Note 2 Specs Leaked, Mi5S Coming As Well appeared first on Gizmochina.