After so many months of leaks and rumors, the Xiaomi Mi 5C smartphone is finally officially. And just as expected, the Mi 5C is the first smartphone to feature Xiaomi’s newly announced Pinecone S1 /  Surge S1 chipset. The phone is essentially a mid-ranger, but the design and the overall looks of the phone are pretty top-notch.

The Xiaomi Mi 5C comes in multiple color options, including gold, black, and pink. The phone looks a bit different than other Xiaomi smartphones in the market mainly because of its four curved corners and smoother metal finish. Xiaomi is known to equip its mid-range phones with a large battery, but for some reason, the company decided to keep the battery under 3000mAh. This, in turn, helps in making the Xiaomi Mi 5C super light, weighing just 134 grams and 7.09mm in thickness. The full measurements of the Mi 5C are as follows: 144.38 x 69.68mm x 7.09mm.

The phone comes with a 5.15-inch 1080p display from JDI with 550 nits brightness, 2048 intelligent brightness adjustments, and ultra-narrow 1.66mm bezels. The battery on the phone is just 2860mAh but the company claims that this is good enough for a day’s usage. The phone supports 9V/ 2A fast charging as well. Xiaomi has also promised Android 7.1 Nougat upgrade for the Mi 5C in March.

Coming to the camera, the Xiaomi Mi 5C comes with a 12MP sensor with large 1.25um pixels enabling better low-light photography. The dual ISP algorithm reportedly improves the camera speed by up to 150%. Also, the double noise optimization feature helps in reducing the noise in the images while retaining important details. With support for pixel level dynamic range adjustment, the pictures shot from the phone come out rich as well. Of course, these are the official camera details, only a real life test of Mi 5C’s camera will reveal its actual capability.

The Xiaomi Mi 5C goes on sale on March 3 at 1499 Yuan (~218) for the 3GB + 64GB version.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5C Official: Pinecone S1 Processor, 5.15-inch Display & Super Light Body appeared first on Gizmochina.

Xiaomi has always wanted to join the elite ranks of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei in designing in-house chipsets. That dream has just become a reality today as the company announced its first ever smartphone processor, the Xiaomi Surge S1. We expected the chip to be called as the Pinecone processor but the company is probably giving it a different name, the Xiaomi Surge S1. Now, now note that this is the direct translation of “澎湃S1” and the official English name could be Xiaomi Pinecone S1 or even Pengpai S1 (since 澎湃 is Pengpai in Chinese). We’ll get the official details on the name soon, but let’s focus on the specs and features of the Pinecone S1 chipset.

The Xiaomi Pinecone S1 or Surging S1 chipset comes with an octa-core architecture with 4 x Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.2GHz and 4 x Cortex A53 cores at 1.4GHz. The chip will be built on a 28nm HPC+ process. The company claims the combination of four powerful and four efficient cores result in a perfect balance of performance and power efficiency. As for GPU, the chip is using ARM Mali-T860, which comes with 40% better power efficiency as compared to its predecessor, support for AFBC and ASTC image compression technology and the latest Vulkan standard.

The chip also comes with 32-bit DSP support, VoLTE, 14-bit dual ISP with support for dual noise optimized night picture improvement. Xiaomi also adds that the Pinecone S1 comes with its own chip-level security which is reportedly upgradeable via OTA. The chip also features mechanisms to prevent data leakage.

Now, something that many of you are interested about: the Xiaomi Pinecone S1 AnTuTu score.

The company revealed in the conference that the Pinecone S1 AnTuTu score was higher than that of Snapdragon 625 and even Helio P2o chipsets. Of course, AnTuTu scores don’t reveal the real life performance of the chipset, but we can expect the chip to be placed among these two mid-range processors in the market.

It took 28 months for Xiaomi to develop the Pinecone S1 from the project stage to mass production stage. The company’s ultimate goal is to mass produce high-end chips which attain a perfect balance of performance and power consumption.

For the first Xiaomi chipset, the company seems to have done a pretty good job. The Pinecone S1 will be first available on the company’s brand new Xiaomi Mi 5C smartphone. More details on the Mi 5C coming soon.

The post Xiaomi’s First Pinecone Chipset, the Surge S1 Released: Octa-core, Mali-T860, Dual ISP & More appeared first on Gizmochina.