After keeping us waiting for more than a year, Xiaomi has finally taken the wraps off its new flagship smartphone: the Xiaomi Mi5. With a Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM, the Mi5 can easily hold its own against other flagships in terms of power, but it’s the ridiculously low price of $262 for the 32GB version or $354 for the 128GB version that makes the Mi5 so appealing. Pair that with the fact that the design of the phone combines many of the best parts of the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6S, and it’s clear that Apple and Samsung might have to watch their backs.
Xiaomi has officially announced the Mi 5, its latest flagship device, at events in Beijing and Barcelona today. The Mi 5 follows the Mi 4 launched 18 months ago. It is a 5.15-inch smartphone with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor, up to 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, a 3,000mAh battery, and what Xiaomi is calling a “3D ceramic” body. It has a similar design language to last year’s Mi Note and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5, with a metal frame, front and rear glass panels, and a fingerprint sensor integrated into the home button. The Mi 5’s camera is a 16-megapixel unit with four-axis optical image stabilization. The Mi 5 runs Xiaomi’s MIUI 7 interface on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and comes with weekly software updates from Xiaomi’s community. It’s the first phone that ships with Xiaomi’s Mi Video Calling app, a new cross platform video chat app that includes live video effects and multitasking modes. The phone will be available starting on March 1st and will be priced at $354 (2,600RMB) for the high-end 128GB model and $262 (1,999RMB) for the entry-level 32GB version, keeping in line with Xiaomi’s tradition of offering a lot of specs for a low price. The Mi 5 will come in black, white, and gold color options. It will come to China first, followed by India and other markets Xiaomi sells its devices in.
