Xiaomi has been one of the fastest growing smartphone makers from China and is the biggest smartphone maker from the country as well. Not only has the company been offering really good looking smartphones and accessories but all of them have been on the more affordable side. The company unveiled its most powerful flagship smartphone today at the Mobile World Congress, the Mi 5.
Update to the Mi 4, the Mi 5 comes after about 18 months the last flagship was announced and the company has a strong reason for that. The new smartphone features a high-quality finish including a 3D ceramic design which includes a curved back with a metal frame in the middle. It looks very similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 but Xiaomi VP, Hugo Barra said that the handset takes its inspiration from their older phablet, the Mi Note/Note Pro. It weighs just 129 grams with a 7.25mm thickness and the handset definitely looks sleek.
There is a 5.1-inch full HD resolution display which is said to offer great brightness going up to 600 nits. The company also says that it offers a better screen to body ratio than many other flagship smartphones and feels more like a 5-inch device. Underneath the display there is a home-button, a first for any Xiaomi smartphone which also houses a fingerprint scanner. The handset uses the latest Snapdragon 820 processor from Qualcomm which is much more stable and more powerful than the 810. The company will be offering three variants including a high-end 128GB storage model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB and 32GB models with 3GB RAM. Both of these are claimed to be one of the fastest as Xiaomi has used a new type of LPDDR4 RAM which is 100 per cent faster than the Mi 4.
The product also uses UFS type storage which is again 87 per cent faster than eMMC. In the camera department there is a 16MP camera with a PDAF auto-focus and a 4-axis OIS (Optical Image Stabiliser). A 4MP camera sits on the front similar to the one that has been used on many HTC One smartphones. Thanks to the new processor, the smartphone supports quick charge 3.0 to charge the 3000mAh battery quite quickly. Rest of the features include USB Type-C, NFC, Dual-SIM card slots, 4G and VoLTE support.
Pricing and availability hasn't been confirmed but various sources confirm that handset will release on the 1st of March with prices as follows:
- 32GB of storage and 3GB RAM: 2000 yuan (Rs. 21,000)
- 64GB of storage and 3GB RAM: 2300 yuan (Rs. 24,000)
- 128GB of storage and 4GB (Ceramic version): 2700 yuan (Rs. 28,500)
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