Xiaomi's new flagship, the Mi 5 offers comparable specifications at a reasonable price

In 2015, it sold over 70 million phones making it the number one brand in the Chinese market. At MWC 2016 last weekend, Xiaomi announced the Mi 5, their latest flagship and the Mi 4’s successor. Two key points were emphasized in the announcement: design and speed.

The Mi 5’s design draws heavily from the Mi Note, Xiaomi’s first phone to use curved glass on the back. The device bears a passing resemblance to Samsung’s Galaxy S7 but the Mi 5 uses more gently curved edges than either device and eliminates the Mi Note’s partially flat sides. The front of the device is edge-to-edge glass covering a 5.15 inch 1080 pixel IPS display. Similar to other Xiaomi phones, the Mi 5 uses an extended color gamut panel listed at 95% NTSC meaning it is capable of displaying exceptionally vivid colors. While some customers may view this as a positive feature, others find inaccurate colors resulting from deviations from the sRGB color space, which covers only about 72% of NTSC, disappointing.

Xiaomi said the slightly larger than 5 inch screen size was necessary in order to increase the number of LEDs in the backlight to 16 from the standard 12 to 14 found in most edge-lit IPS displays. This feature improves power efficiency by 17%, presumably from using more LEDs at lower individual output levels. The new device also includes the company’s Sunlight Display feature that utilizes Snapdragon 820’s Hexagon 680 DSP to adjust the contrast for every pixel to improve screen visibility in bright sunlight. Simply put, it selectively brightens dark areas of the screen without washing out the brighter areas.

Located below the screen is a physical home button with an integrated fingerprint sensor, a first on Xiaomi phones. In terms of other specifications, the device has 3 GB of RAM, 32 or 64 GB of internal storage with no microSD card support, a 3,000 mAh non-removable battery, a 4 megapixel front camera, and a 16 megapixel rear camera featuring PDAF, OIS, and dual-color LED flash. The device operates on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and is available in white, gold, and black.

The Mi 5’s specifications are as good as any Android flagship device debuting this year so performance should not be an issue. For now, the Mi 5 will only be available in China through their website and at Mi Home stores starting March 1st ranging from RMB 2299 – RMB 2699 ($262 – $354 before taxes). Xiaomi did say that the device will debut in the global market but did not specify where so hopefully the US market is included on that list!  

Source: Cheap Phones