Xiaomi launches Mi 5 32GB variant in India at Rs 24,999

Mumbai: Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi finally launched its flagship Mi 5 in India on Thursday at an event in New Delhi.

While the 32GB variant of the handset has been priced at Rs 24,999, the company did not make any announcements regarding the 64GB variant for Indian markets.

For the first four weeks, the device will be available on the company's website (mi.com) and will be rolled out subsequently to other major online portals.

Earlier, Xiaomi's Global VP Hugo Barra made the announcement on Facebook.  He said: "Indian Mi fans, your Monday just got insanely better. I'm happy to announce that the ‪Mi5 ‬launch event will happen in India on the 31st of March."

Xiaomi Mi 5 builds upon the design language of Mi Note, featuring curved edges that transition from glass to metal seamlessly. 

In terms of specifications packed with a Snapdragon 820 1.8GHz chipset, 3GB RAM, and 32GB internal storage capacity. The handset will be available in three different colours—black, white and gold.

In terms of display. the device features a vibrant 5.15-inch HD LCD setup with 600-nit brightness, with 16 LEDs behind its display panel. The screen is also 17 per cent more power efficient, which means that it is battery saving despite being extremely bright.

It 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. Other connectivity options such as 4G networks and VoLTE.

Weighing 129g and with a thickness of 7.25mm, Mi 5 is considerably light, even with a large 3000mAh battery and a front-facing fingerprint sensor.

Mi 5 boasts insanely fast performance with an Antutu score of over 140,000, thanks to the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset. The Adreno 530 GPU is claimed to be 40 per cent faster and more power efficient than the Adreno 810.

It 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.

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

This 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 colour separation.

Unfortunately, only the 32GB variant of the handset was launched in India and the company made no announcements regarding the Mi 5 64GB, or the Mi 5 Pro with 128GB storage capacity.