Finally, and once again, Xiaomi has broken the ice—they have released their flagship smartphone thats not only light on the pocket (literally), but also at par with premium flagships out there. The Xiaomi Mi 5 could topple the premium flagship smartphone industry standards by creating a benchmark in the pricing segment. The Mi 5 holds the most powerful beast within and along with its premium looks, build and price, it could be pronounced as a 2016 flagship till date. However, we still like to tag it as a 'budget high-end phone'.
Xiaomi, the Chinese tech giant, who came into the country around two years ago, has managed to turn the smartphone market on its head with budget-priced mid-range smartphones. The company has a different ball game and believes in making lower profits to sell higher quantities. Ever since Xiaomi has been in the market outside China, especially in India, it has been sending many smartphone manufacturers back to the drawing board. With ultra-budget smartphones like the Redmi 1S and mainstream handsets such as the Redmi Note 3, Xiaomi has definitely given the rival brands a run for their money. However, with the launch of the 2016 flagship Mi 5, Xiaomi seems to be slowly crawling into the higher price segment, probably leaving behind the ‘budget smartphone maker’ tag. With the first smartphone being priced above the Rs 20,000 category, Xiaomi seems to have priced the Mi 5 a little higher. But nevertheless, the Rs 24,999 price is still far more affordable for those seeking a powerful smartphone for cheap. Can the Xiaomi Mi 5 truly carry the flagship killer title? Find out.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 is definitely an elegant-looking premium smartphone we have come across. Though the curved build is not the first as Samsung has already taken charge of that division with the Galaxy S6 Edge, the Mi 5 seems to have mastered the same in a different way. It has borrowed quite a few designs from its older sibling, the Mi Note.
For starters, if you take a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and flip it around, you can get a feel of what the Xiaomi Mi 5 would be. With a rounded rear panel made from glass (Corning Gorilla Glass 4) and a flat display surface, the Xiaomi Mi 5 represents what the Galaxy S6 would be lying face down. But Xiaomi has taken a step further and designed the edges with a difference. It caters to a non-slippery body, better ergonomics when using it and definitely lighter in comparison.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 has an all-metal frame with a sand-blasted surface and chamfered edges towards the display. The top and bottom edges are crafted in perfection to flush with the display and rear panel, giving it a premium look along with the comfort to operate. The two edges, left and right, are etched at an angle which allows for better control and reach, to the volume and power buttons placed on the right side. The left features a Dual nano SIM tray, the bottom has the IP67 USB type-C connector along with the speaker and mic and the top edge has the headphone jack and IR blaster. The USB Type-C is the only waterproof portion as it incorporates an IP67 certification to prevent water from entering the connector gap. The Mi 5 sports a 129g body with a thickness of 7.25mm.
The display is a 5.15-incher ultra-bright LCD panel with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and a pixel density of 428ppi. The display has a high contrast ratio of 1500:1 which is achieved by using 16 ultra-bright and low powered white LEDs. The display also sports the Sunlight Display feature, which increases the contrast when you are in broad daylight, helping with the visibility of the display in brightly lit areas. The display is also designed keeping the symmetry in mind for a perfect-looking smartphone. The front camera, earpiece and the sensors are allocated in the centre of the smartphone’s forehead.
The bottom has the two capacitive touch buttons which can be used for either back or menu respectively. The button functions can be switched from the settings. For the first time, Xiaomi has put a physical button for home on its phone. The home button is a rectangular one with sports a chrome-cornered ceramic surface. Xiaomi has built the home button with ceramic, unlike rivals who use glass and sapphire, because the fingerprint sensor that resides below the button is capacitive and ceramic is both scratch-resistant and capacitive-friendly.
The rear panel is made from a Gorilla Glass 4 with a 3D curved glass design. The 16MP camera sits flush with the surface and is located on the extreme top-left corner along with a dual-LED flash. The rear panel is replaceable, should there be a need for colour change or in case of damage. However, Xiaomi has not announced any replaceable rear panels as yet.
The rear panel can be removed easily—you need a suction tool for the rear panel to come off, which is similar to the design found on the Xiaomi Mi 4. However, below the rear panel there are no user-replaceable or serviceable parts. Below the rear panel you will see a non-removable 3000mah battery and an NFC antenna (towards the top). Xiaomi has also managed to shave off a few millimetres from the Mi 5 by adopting metallic, printed antennas and also making use of the using the metal frame as an antenna. In order to keep the device as thin and light as possible, Xiaomi has also managed to use thin metal construction for the camera’s housing.
Under the hood lies the beast—a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset. The SD 820 features a quad-core Kryo processor growling at 1.8GHz (although slightly underclocked), clubbed with the Andreno 530 GPU and 3GB of LPDDR4 dual-channel RAM. Note: The Mi 5 has two variants in its specifications. While one sports a 1.8GHz processor with just 3GB of RAM and 32/64GB of storage, the higher-end Mi 5 (Pro) sports a 2.2GHz processor with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The Mi 5 which will be available in India for now is the 3GB RAM with 32GB storage and Xiaomi has yet to launch the 128GB Pro version in China. There is no confirmation if the same will be seen in India soon. If it does, we could see a higher price of around Rs 35,000, which will probably be a fairly expensive ‘Mi’ device to own back here. However, at (approx) Rs 35,000, the Mi 5 Pro will still be fairly cheaper than what the rivals are available for.
Moving further, the Mi 5 is a dual SIM Android smartphone and features compatibility with 4G nano SIM cards. Xiaomi has not provided a hybrid SIM/Storage card slot citing an increase in cost and thickness of the Mi 5. On the connectivity front, the Mi 5 features 4G dual SIM (2 x nano SIM slots), 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band Wi-Fi, MU-MIMO enabled, Wi-Fi Display, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.2, Bluetooth HID, Full-feature NFC, supports reads/writes, card emulation and P2P, GPS, AGPS and GLONASS. Sensors include Infrared, Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor, Hall sensor, Electronic compass and Barometer. Other specifications include IR blaster, NFC, MIUI V7 with Android Marshmallow 6.0.X out of the box, USB Type-C connection and VoLTE network support.
As for the performance, we witnessed absolutely no lag or issues with the device, at least whenever we used it. The SD820 beast with its 3GB of RAM and Adreno 530 GPU partners take on the challenges of multitasking and high-end gaming with ease. The Full HD display also helps in lowering the stress on the graphics processor when playing high-end games such as Asphalt 8, Need for Speed No Limits or Nova 3, when comparing it to other rival smartphones that sport a 2K display. What this means is that the processors do not have the stress of powering up twice the number of pixels, but has just 1920x1080 pixels to manage. And in any case, you won’t need a 2K display (for now) since most games support up to 1080p resolutions and 2K/4K games and videos are still not readily available. The only place where you would need a 2K and higher display is when using a VR headset, but again, the content is not out there as yet.
Yes, the device does run hot when using the camera for long or playing a few games. But not as hot as compared to the older SD810 chipset because Qualcomm has managed to flush out the heating problems with the SD820 to quite an extent, apart from increasing its efficiency and power management capabilities. One must note that all high-end smartphones will tend to get warm-to-hot depending on the type of mobile activity and weather conditions in your area. The faster your chipset is, the hotter they will run. Take for example desktop PCs—when it was the era of 386 and 486, processors did not need a heatsink, but after the Pentium came in, processors got faster and more demanding, putting in the need for cooling fans and even water cooling equipments. Even your regular Atom-based desktop PC and low-end notebooks today have heat pipes and CPU cooling units in place. So if you find your Mi 5 heating up, don’t bother as the device will not heat as much, and the cooling for the same has been taken care of internally.
The fingerprint sensor on the Mi 5 is a first—a first to be on the front of the device and that too underneath the rectangular home button. The fingerprint sensor is pretty accurate and speedy—it takes less than a split second for the fingerprint sensor to scan your finger and give you access to the device. In fact, when you press the unlock the Mi 5 using the home button, the fingerprint sensor works in tandem, and is so fast that it has already scanned your finger by the time you press on the home button. You can also unlock the phone with your finger in any position, 360-degrees.
Xiaomi had been spending a lot of time on researching the Mi 5 design and its hardware. As for the camera, Xiaomi has brought in the first sensor with a 4-axis optical image stabilization feature. The 16MP Sony IMX298 sensor has an active image stabilization lens that can move in eight different directions to compensate the unwanted movement of the user’s hands when shooting a photo or video. It detects vibrations from up to 8 directions through the gyroscope and accelerometer, and calibrates the micro-motor to adjust camera posture and movement. Most other smartphones today use 2-axis OIS. A 4MP 2-micron pixel front camera makes it good for selfies too.
The rear camera is great and the OIS works well with videos and photos. The camera’s lens moves around in eight directions, helping it compensate for handshakes and minor vibrations that can cause the photos to get blurred. But it only helps with marginal shakes and shivers when handling the device. major bumps, moves and jerks will definitely ruin your shot.
In order to gauge the camera’s performance, we shot a number of photos from the rear camera in broad daylight, in the shade, at night and even in pitch darkness. The photos turned out great with a good balance of brightness and contrast. However, we did notice the image quality on photos a mixed affair. Photos taken in broad daylight turned out good, but in the shade, you can get good shots as well as bad shots.
Photos in good lighting conditions are good enough. Colours are vibrant and photos are pretty sharp too. We also compared some photos with the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, which has a similar 16MP camera and found that there was little or no difference in the quality in most landscape images we took. However, when using the camera in macro modes, we did find the Mi 5 struggling to quite an extent. When comparing the Mi 5 with the Galaxy S6 Edge, the older Samsung flagship with a 16MP camera, the Samsung managed to defeat it completely. We found macro images to be much sharper and better than the ones taken from the Mi 5. Check out the sample images shot by the Samsung and the Mi 5 as a comparison below. Also we found that the Mi 5 struggled to focus well on subjects that are tiny, as the background gets more prominence over the subject, making it harder to focus.
As for landscape photos, the images are well balanced in terms of brightness, contrast, colours and sharpness. Focusing is also fast. The difference we found was the speed at which the camera could snap images—the Mi 5 was faster; as fast as the Samsung flagship Galaxy S7. Images shot with the Mi 5 have vibrant colours and look great. Colours are pleasant, but not natural—at times too vibrant, at times punchy—especially with reds and pinks, which tends to get a boost. We leave you with a few images below that we shot using the Xiaomi Mi 5. The images shown below are compressed to smaller sizes, but are not corrected in any ways.
Images shot in the shade and at night with just sufficient light are also good enough. Low light images are good, and we cannot say that they are great. Low light images turn out grainy, though the amount of details is captured well. Check out some photos captured in the evening, at night, in low light and in complete darkness. While some are good, others are acceptable.
This shot was taken at dawn.
A shot from the camera held while riding a bike at night.
Indoor shot with the usual office warm lights.
Photos taken with lights turned on and off, inside an aircraft.
Shot in pitch darkness.
Indoors, with flash.
In short, the Mi 5's camera performs great in well-lit areas, but fails marginally in low light conditions.
While testing the camera section, we did notice that the area around the camera tends to heat up quite a bit. Though not alarmingly hot, it is enough to bother you immediately. However, the device also cools down quickly. Wish Xiaomi did something like Samsung and installed a heatpipe cooling solution too. The possible reason for the camera heating up could be the OIS-related coils that are constantly active, making sure that the lens is stable.
Moving ahead, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is fuelled by a 3000mAh non removable battery. It supports Quick Charge 3.0 for faster charging as compared to conventional batteries. Sadly, Xiaomi is bundling a regular charger (2.0) with the Mi 5 in India and has not confirmed as to when a Quick Charge 3.0 charger will be available with it. The reasons for not providing a Quick Charge 3.0 charger are not very clear, though Xiaomi claims that it could increase the cost of the device here in India.
Verdict: With a premium build, a flagship Snapdragon 820 chipset, a 16MP camera with a 4-axis OIS lens and a price tag of just Rs 24,999, the Mi 5 is sure to make high-end smartphone hunters happy indeed. The Mi 5 definitely manages to break the ice with rivals’ flagships out there in the price-to-performance segment. As for our views, Xiaomi seems to definitely emerge as a flagship killer for 2016. Simply said—with a Xiaomi, you get what you pay for. However, if you are not constraint on your budget, and have enough to spend on a flagship device, you could opt for high-end premiums from Samsung, LG or Apple. But if you are looking for a powerful smartphone and usually keep changing your handset to get the best hardware in hand as and when they arrive, the highly affordable Xiaomi Mi 5 is the best we can suggest.
Sadly, Xiaomi has not announced the 64GB version here in India and will sell only the 3GB/32GB variant for now. It is not clear whether Xiaomi will introduce the Mi 5 4GB/128GB version here too.
Pros: Price of Rs 24,999, a 16MP camera with OIS, Android Marshmallow 6.0.X out of the box, Weekly updates on MIUI, a fast 360-degree angle fingerprint sensor, aesthetic and premium 3D curved design, light weight, Gorilla Glass 4 on the front and rear, 4G Dual SIM compatibility, IR port.
Cons: No storage expansion (or hybrid SIM slot), no Quick Charge 3.0 charger, slight heating issues, no waterproof feature, no 64GB storage variant available in India, difficult to procure because of flash sales, no user-replaceable rear panel glass available in case of damage.
