Xiaomi had announced the successor of Mi4, the Xiaomi Mi5 at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2016). Mi5 comes with a 5.15 inch Full HD display with a resolution of 1920 X 1080p and is powered by the most powerful processor, the Snapdragon 820 Quad core chipset coupled with either 3GB or 4GB of RAM and Adreno 530 GPU.
The phone also comes in three variants 32GB storage with 3GB RAM, 64GB storage with 3GB RAM and a 128GB storage with 4GB of RAM. We had a chance to test out the device at the launch of Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and here are our impressions.
Here is the hands on video.
Design wise, the Mi5 is all metal and glass design and comes with 2.5D glass covering on a metal chassis. The phone has curved edges towards the rear panel similar to the Mi Note and Mi Note Pro. The front panel houses the 5.15 inch Full HD display, a physical home button which also acts as a fingerprint scanner, capacitive backlit back and multitasking button, usual sensors, front camera and the earpiece.
All the four edges of the device are curved and it has a glossy back cover. The pro version is made of ceramic instead of glass. The rear panel houses the 16MP camera, dual tone LED flash and the Mi Logo. The right side has the power and volume keys while the SIM tray is on the left side. The bottom houses the USB C type port and the speaker unit. There is IR blaster on the top along with microphone and audio jack.
The device feels incredibly light for a metal and glass finish and is just 129gms. While the overall finishing and build quality is top notch, the glass finishing could make the device a bit slippery, we need to use it more to have a final conclusion.
There are three variants of the device and the one we tested was the base variant which Snapdragon 820 clocked at 1.8Ghz coupled with 3GB of RAM. There is 32GB internal storage with an expandable option via micro SD card and dual SIM card slot.
The phone comes with 16MP rear camera with dual-tone LED flash, Phase detection autofocus (PDAF), OIS and 4K video recording support. The front camera on the device is a 4MP unit with 2um pixel size. The camera interface is typical MIUI interface with not much of a change. The phone runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with custom MIUI 7 on top of it.
On the connectivity front, it has 4G+, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, Infrared and USB C Type charging cable. The phone packs a 3000mAh battery with fast charging support. Xiaomi has confirmed that the phone is coming to India in a month’s time. We would if you are looking for a high-end flagship phone, this is definitely one device to wait for especially with the pricing.
