New Delhi: Xiaomi has unveiled its latest flagship smartphone — Mi 5, two years after launching the Mi 4 which raked in huge revenues for the tech-giant with sales figures close to 4 million.
The Mi 5 was unveiled at Xiaomi's event in Beijing by CEO Lei Jun. The company also revealed the smartphone at MWC in Barcelona and marked Xiaomi's first official presence at the global event. The Mi 5 will go on sale next month in China, starting at a price of 1,999, which is approximately Rs 20,900. The Launch in India is yet to be announced but here are all the details on Xiaomi's newest flagship smartphone.
Xiaomi Mi 5 design: The Mi 5 closely resembles company's popular device Mi Note that was launched last year. The smartphone comes with a new build, what Xiaomi calls as the 'Zirconium 3D ceramic body'. The company claims that it isn't just strong, but also makes the smartphone slim.
Hugo Barra, Vice President Xiaomi, at the MWC Barcelona event added that the ceramic material used on the Mi 5 is not the kind of ceramic one can find in plates but has high-grade nano-ceramic zirconia. He added, "It's durable and resists any kind of abrasion really wall-up to 8H on the Mohs hardness scale; steel is 4 to 4.5 for comparison, while a diamond is at 10."
The Mi 5 also features 144.55×69.20×7.25mm, and weighs only 129 grams. Xiaomi has very well managed the camera bump and says that the dimensions help to use the device with one hand.
Camera: Xiaomi is known for its amazing camera quality and has been showcasing sample shots of the Mi 5 before the launch. The smartphone comes with a 16-megapixel Sony IMX298 camera sensor with PDAF and LED flash. The rear camera sports 4-axis OIS (optical image stabilisation) and sapphire glass protection lens. It also supports 4K video recording and a 4-Ultrapixel front camera, with 2-micron pixels. Both the cameras feature an f/2.0 aperture. The company says that the Mi 5 comes with the company's first camera featuring DTI (deep trench isolation) technology that will prevent light leaks.
Fingerprint scanner: Fingerprint scanner was one of the highlights in the smartphone industry last year. Though the company is late but, for the first time on its device has come up with a home button and has integrated the fingerprint scanner. The company has only said that the scanner is super-fast. And no official time has been revealed yet.
Battery: Another highlight of the Mi 4 is the addition of Quick Charge 3.0 on the Mi 5. The previous flagship smartphone, Mi 4 also had a Quick Charge 2.0 and was said to accelerate charging time by 75 percent. With Quick Charge 3.0, the Mi 5 is said to charge 20 percent faster. The company also claims that the Quick Charge will allow Mi 5 to be used for 2.5 hours with 5 minutes of charge while just one hour of charging will give 80-90 percent. Xiaomi also has a USB Type-C on the Mi 5.
Specifications: The Mi 5 features a 5.15-inches full HD (1920×1080 pixels) display with curved glass, and 600 nits brightness. The smartphone is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chipset paired with LPDDR4 RAM and the company claims that it is nearly 100 times faster than LPDDR3.
The smartphone in terms of storage has 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. The device doesn't have a microSD card slot, though the Mi 5 uses a UFS 2.0 storage, which the company says is much faster than the standard eMMC storage.
In terms of connectivity the dual-SIM smartphone supports 4G LTE with VoLTE. It has a download speed of up to 600Mbps. It also includes Wi-Fi, IR Blaster, Bluetooth 4.1, USB Type-C port and NFC. The Mi 5 runs on the latest Android Marshmallow under MIUI 7. It also supports video calling by default with real-time Beautification and Multitasking.
