Xiaomi will be opening up the Mi 6 tomorrow to go on its first flash sale exercise in China and they have disclosed that only the bright black version of the flagship will be available. The Mi 6 Bright Black 64GB variant is offered for 2499 Yuan while the 128GB version goes for 2999 Yuan.

As we’ve been expecting, Xiaomi has given the Mi 5S and Mi 5S Plus models slight reduction in their prices, ahead of the Mi 6 first sale. Both models have gotten a 150 Yuan reduction in their prices across all variants. Consequently, the Mi 5S is now up for 1,849 Yuan instead of 1999 Yuan while the M5S Plus 4GB + 64GB now costs 2,149 Yuan instead of 2,299Yuan and the 6GB + 128GB version 2449 Yuan, almost at par with the Mi 6 64GB version. This price reduction is only for one day, though, and that is April 28 when the Mi 6 will be on sale.

Read More: Hello Mother Russia: Xiaomi Makes Grand Entry to Russia with Three Smartphones

The company is perhaps trying to capitalise on the Mi 6 sales and the huge attention it has attracted, to sell other models. Because nothing else explains the fact that Xiaomi has also made the Mi MIX and Mi Note 2 available for purchase on its online store. This is a good move and could bring some results as the Mi 6 registration on Jingdong alone presently stands at over 1.2 million persons. This should be more than the total units that would go on sale across several platforms tomorrow.While some fans would still want to go through the long wait that they will sure encounter to buy the Mi 6 even after the first flash sale, others might just choose to go for other models. Moreso, the Mi 5S, Mi 5S Plus, Mi Mix and Mi Note 2 are attractive smartphones that would surely make for a good buy.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5S & Mi 5S Plus Prices Officially Slashed Ahead of Mi 6 First Sale 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.

Finally, the Xiaomi Mi 5S and Mi 5S Plus have both been unveiled and indeed the unveiling was packed with lots of surprises. Most surprising is the fact that the Mi 5S Plus is only a Plus version in size and not ready a higher variant of the Mi 5S . Another surprise package is the actual render of the devices, especially the Mi 5S which looked nothing like the leaked renders we had been holding on to. Yet another surprise, perhaps the most epic of the lot, is the price tag which the Xiaomi Mi 5S amd 5S Plus carries, which even comes cheaper than the cheap price tag they had been rumored to carry. You’ll get to see this early hands on and unboxing images which comes courtesy of Sina Technology.

The Xiaomi Mi 5S and Mi 5S Plus are real beauties in all ramifications; beautiful design, awesome specs, innovative features and lots. However, they both cannot be at par, the Mi 5S comes in as the most innovative, and beautiful of the duo. The Mi 5S alone features the acclaimed under glass ultrasonic fingerprint scanner situated as a virtual button at the home screen region right under the display.

The Xiaomi Mi 5S Plus on the other hand, comes as a 5.7 incher and sports a dual camera at its rear which is said to include a black and white sensor and a color sensor. They both can work independently or together to give crisp clear images devoid of image noise. Its own fingerprint scanner is at the back under the dual cameras and there are no virtual buttons but capacitive keys on the device.

If you don’t look carefully, merely staring at the Xiaomi Mi 5S and Mi 5S Plus box casing would give the impression that you are staring at the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus boxes. And quite frankly, opening up the boxes reveal devices as beautiful, if not more beautiful, as the latest iPhones. The devices comes inside the boxes with their charger and data cables.

We must not fail however to point out that the shape of the virtual button looks nothing like the iPhone’s round home key as rumored but rather maintains Xiaomi’s custom oblong shape. The only different should be the fact that the button this time around is a virtual one and you won’t get to hear the click sound when pressed.

Read More: Why The Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner on The Xiaomi Mi 5s is Visible

In all, these are real beauties and it is just apt to say that the China phone giants seem to be on a mission to redefine what a flagship actually is. First OnePlus 3, then Le Pro 3 and now the Mi 5S has taken the old impression that a flagship has to be pricey to the cleaners and we are indeed impressed! Delight yourselves in lot more images from down below.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5S & Mi 5S Plus Hands On & Unboxing Images appeared first on Gizmochina.

Things may not have gone as planned this year for Xiaomi, however, the company is back in the game in the top-end segment with not one but two new flagship grade smartphones, the Xiaomi Mi 5S and the Xiaomi Mi 5S Plus. We have been hearing about these two devices for the past few weeks and leaks started to come in pretty fast recently. But now, both the devices have been made official which means we have all the information that we need about these two handsets.

Read on to find out more about the Xiaomi Mi 5S.

DESIGN:

Xiaomi used 3D Glass body on its earlier flagship, the Xiaomi Mi 5 and there was a 3D Ceramic version as well. This time, for its new flagship, Xiaomi is using a metal body. This could be a good decision as mass producing the ceramic body is not an easy task and we don’t want any supply problems with the Mi 5S as its predecessor.

The Xiaomi Mi 5S comes with an all metal design with four color options, dark gray, silver, gold and rose gold. It’s curvier and smoother in terms of design as compared to its predecessor. The metal gets a matte anodizing finish to give it a unique look. On the front, the phone features 2.5D glass, giving it a slightly curved feel.

Dimensions: 145.6 x 70.3 x 8.25mm | Weight: 145 grams

Plus, you even have the option of getting the 79 Yuan ($12) dot protective case to give your phone a different look.

SPECS:

As expected, the Xiaomi Mi 5S comes with the powerful Snapdragon 821 chipset, which is the upgraded version of the already powerful Snapdragon 820. Then there’s LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB / 128GB UFS 2.0 high-speed memory on the device. There will be two variants: 3GB + 64GB and 4GB + 128GB.

The phone features a 5.15-inch custom high-brightness 1920 x 1080p display with brightness up to 600 nits. Other features of the display include NTSC color gamut coverage up to 95% and high color saturation. What’s also special about this display is that it supports pressure sensitivity but only in the 4GB + 128GB model!

While these specs are pretty good, what’s really the highlight of the Xiaomi Mi 5S is its ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. Yes, it will be the first mass produced smartphone to feature the advanced ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. This 3D sensor enabled seamless integration of panels unlike other capacitive sensors. Further, it’s quick, accurate and long lasting. The sensor is located below the glass, without the need for any opening in the display panel.

The company did mention that optimizing the ultrasonic sensor required a lot of time and efforts from its engineers. But finally by June 2016, Xiaomi successfully solved major problems with the sensor and optimized power consumption.

The camera is yet another highlight of the Xiaomi Mi 5S. The phone comes with a 12MP Sony IMX378 1/2.3″ 1.55um sensor , which is 61% larger than the one inside the iPhone 6S Plus. Since the sensor size is bigger, Xiaomi claims that the phone is able to capture stellar photos, even at night. However, note that this is a single camera module. Only the Mi 5S Plus comes with the dual camera module at the back.

Other specs of the camera module include f/2.0, 6P lens, 80 degree wide angle, dual LED dual tone color temperature flash, PDAF, Second Gen. Qualcomm ISP, facial recognition, auto HDR and Panorama. The camera supports 4K shooting at 30 fps, 1080p at 120 fps and slo-mo 720p at 120 fps.

Up front, you get a 4MP Ultrapixel camera with f/2.o aperture, 80 degree wide angle lens, facial recognition etc.

Lei Jun revealed that the company gave out the Mi 5S to a professional photographer traveling to Northern Europe and the US. The pictures taken by the photographer turned out to be very good, and with the right amount of exposure control, even night time photography from the Mi 5S turned out to be impressive. You can check out the official samples below (a couple of them we have already seen).

To see whether the Xiaomi Mi 5S camera is good or bad, the company conducted a blind test with a sample of 200 ordinary users who were asked to select the camera sample that they liked. Out of these, 55% (110 users) found the Xiaomi Mi 5S camera sample to be better. In another blind test with a sample of 159 professional photographers, Xiaomi claims that 49% preferred Xiaomi Mi’s camera sample.

The company claims that the phone’s camera comes with richer detail and accurate colors as compared to competitors like the S7 Edge and the iPhone 6S Plus. That’s a big claim, but it also revealed an image comparing the sample from the three phones. Check it out for yourself.

The Xiaomi Mi 5S also comes with NFC and 4G+ technologies. So, it should support fingerprint enabled payment systems like Xiaomi Pay in China. Other specs include 802.1 ac dual band Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2, Bluetooth HID, Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display.

Supported LTE bands include:

FDD-LTE B1, B3, B5, B7 and B8

TDD-LTE B38, B39, B40 and B41

The battery is of 3200mAh capacity with QC 3.0 support (9V 2A) using the USB Type-C port.

PRICE:

The Xiaomi Mi 5S will start at 1999 Yuan ($300) for the 64GB version and 2299 Yuan ($345) for the 128GB version.

There are many details yet to be revealed by the company like the battery capacity (but it supports Quick Charge 3.0), so we will update this article after more details are available.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5S Official: Snapdragon 821, Under Glass Fingerprint & More for just $300 (Specs UPDATED!) appeared first on Gizmochina.

Until recently, we had thought Xiaomi was releasing only the Mi 5S but then the Mi 5S Plus emerged out of the blues. We had left that off as mere speculation but then a recent leaked posted revealing the prices of both the Xiaomi Mi 5S and Mi 5S Plus have put a stamp on the fact that the “Apple of China” will indeed gift us a Mi 5S Plus.

The two posters contained the Mi logo, perhaps ascribing some authenticity to them but then, we cannot tell if they are indeed authentic. However, the poster reveals the base storage version Mi 5S with Snapdragon 821 chip, 6GB RAM and 64GB storage will start at 1999 Yuan ($300). Not forgetting it is touted as the world’s first smartphone to use Under Glass ultrasonic fingerprint identification and might pack dual rear cameras, among more for just 1999 Yuan ($300). That’s incredible if true!

On the other hand the Mi 5S Plus with SD 821, 6GB RAM and a mammoth 256GB of built-in storage is said to carry a higher price tag of 2999 Yuan ($450). We don’t know much about the Mi 5S Plus but it is said to come with a larger 5.7-inch dual-curved screen display with an upgraded 2K resolution, a Snapdragon 821 chip and probably the same under-glass ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. There was previously no detail about the RAM, ROM, and camera configuration but now we know it will have a 6GB RAM and perhaps only one storage version with 256GB of storage space.

Related: Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus Emerges, Specs Include Snapdragon 821

As stated earlier, we cannot vouch for the authenticity f this information, the Mi 5S and Mi 5S Plus could as well have higher price tags considering the high-end specs they are bringing to the table.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5S & Mi 5S Plus Prices Revealed, Ultra Cheap! appeared first on Gizmochina.

Xiaomi will release a new flagship device, called the Xiaomi Mi 5S on September 27. As we near the release date of the flagship, like tradition, the company has started teasing some of the features of the device. And what better way to promote the Mi 5S, than with its AnTuTu performance scores.

The company released a new teaser today which comes with the number 164,119. It takes very little time to imply that this is the AnTuTu score of the Xiaomi Mi 5S and it’s actually not very surprising given that Snapdragon 821 chip generally scores around this figure. Remember what Le Pro 3 scored? Just above 163K points. We already saw a leaked Mi 5S AnTuTu score screenshot yesterday and even that was above 164K.

RELATED: Xiaomi Mi 5S Could Have A Small 4-inch Variant, New Image Leaked

However, the teaser doesn’t just focus on its top notch performance. It further asks, “What new high-end technology Xiaomi __S has in addition to performance” indicating that we can expect a lot more on the upcoming device. There are two new technologies that we can expect on the Xiaomi Mi 5S, first being 3D Touch and the second being Qualcomm’s Under Glass Ultrasonic Fingerprint sensor.

Rumors and leaks have already painted a good picture of the Mi 5S, with specs like a 5.15-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 821, 4GB / 6GB RAM options, NFC with Mi-Pay and Bus card support etc.

The post Xiaomi Mi 5S Teaser Confirms Top-Notch Performance appeared first on Gizmochina.