MWC 2016: Xiaomi finally launches its much-hyped Mi 5 smartphone

Mumbai: Xiaomi finally unveiled its latest flagship Mi 5 during its Mobile World Congress (MWC) debut on Wednesday, showcasing a sleek designed coupled with next-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, up to 4GB RAM, and 128GB flash memory.

According to Xiaomi’s Global VP Hugo Barra, the device was delayed due to research and design by almost two years. The Mi 5 is touted to be one of the fastest smartphone built yet.

Xiaomi Global VP Hugo Barra with the new Mi 5 at the launch event.Priced at USD 305, which is roughly Rs 21,000, the Mi 5 will be one of the first devices with Snapdragon 820 to be commercially available, with sales starting March 1 on Mi.com and Mi Home outlets in China. It will be made available in selected global markets at a later date.

Mi 5 builds upon the design language of Mi Note, featuring elegant curved edges that transition from glass to metal seamlessly. While 3D glass already makes Mi 5 a beauty to behold, Mi 5 Pro takes that to the next level with a 3D ceramic body, which is strong and durable with the texture of marble.

Weighing only 129g and with a thickness of only 7.25mm, Mi 5 is light beyond imagination. Even with a large high-density 3000mAh battery and a front fingerprint sensor, Mi 5 features an extremely slim frame and a high screen-to-body ratio, made possible only by an innovative structural design that was nearly two years in development.

Mi 5 boasts insanely fast performance with an Antutu score of over 140,000, thanks to the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. By moving to the Kryo architecture, the Snapdragon 820 CPU has double the performance of Snapdragon 810 at half the power consumption.

The Adreno 530 GPU is 40 per cent faster and 40 per cent more power efficient than the Adreno 510.

Mi 5 is also the first Xiaomi smartphone to ship with UFS 2.0 high-speed flash memory, which is designed to greatly surpass the performance of eMMC 5.0 by up to 87 per cent.

For better connectivity, Mi 5 also supports the next-generation 4G networks and Vo LTE.

The 16MP camera on Mi 5 also sports 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), which is more effective at compensating for handshake in a variety of shooting scenarios.

Mi 5 is one of the first devices in the world to ship with the new Sony IMX298 sensor, which is also Xiaomi’s first camera featuring Deep Trench Isolation (DTI), a pixel-to-pixel isolation technology for cleaner color separation.

Mi 5 features a very vibrant 5.15-inch HD display with 600-nit brightness, stemming from an increase to 16 LED lights behind its LCD display. The screen is also 17 per cent more power efficient, which means that it is battery saving despite being extremely bright.

Mi 5 also supports full NFC functionality for reading and writing, as well as Quick Charge 3.0, which can charge up to 90 per cent in just one hour, and is able to give two and a half hours of talk time after charging for just 5 minutes.

The Mi 5 will ship in three variants—Mi 5 32GB, Mi 5 64GB, Mi 5 Pro. The smartphone will be available in three different colours—black, white and gold. While the superior Mi 5 Pro will sport a 3D ceramic glass covering, the other versions will come along with cheaper 3D glass protection.

The Mi 5 32GB will come along with a Snapdragon 820 1.8GHz chipset, 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage capacity, and will be available for USD 305 (Rs 21,000).

The 64GB variant will utilise a Snapdragon 820 2.15GHz processor, 3GB RAM, and 4GB on-board storage. The handset will be available for USD 351 (Rs 24,000).

Lastly, the superior Mi 5 Pro will be powered by a Snapdragon 820 2.15GHz chipset, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage, and is priced at USD 412 (Rs 28,238).