Here’s Xiaomi’s long awaited flagship

After long last, Xiaomi’s new flagship, the Mi 5 is now official. The new device has been two years in the making, and in that time Xiaomi has been looking at ways to improve on their devices, and the Mi 5 is a culmination of those efforts. While the device looks a little like Samsung’s Galaxy S7, Hugo Barra says that it’s a evolution of the Mi Note Pro’s curved design.

The phone sports a metal frame with a gently curved back, and comes in two finishes: a glass back for the 32GB and 64GB version and a more luxurious ceramic back for the highest end, 128GB version. Oddly enough the phone comes with a full HD, 5.15-inch display (and not QHD as some leaks pointed out), a 2.5D curved glass and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection. Just like most flagships announced in MWC the past few days, the phone runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor and either 3GB or 4GB of RAM depending on the version that you get.

Xiaomi Mi 5 specs

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor
• 4GB of RAM
• 5.15-inch full HD IPS display, Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection
• 32GB, 64GB, 128GB of storage
• 16-megapixel rear camera, F/2.0 lens, OIS, Phase Detection AF, 4 axis OIS
• 4-megapixel front camera with 2 micro-meter sized sensor
• Dual SIM
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, fingerprint scanner, QuickCharge 3.0
• 3000mAh battery
• Android Marshmallow, MIUI 7

Xiaomi has pulled out all the stops in the camera experience of the Xiaomi Mi 5. First off, the phone sports Sony’s new IMX 298 sensor, which is paired with a phase detection AF unit and DTI tech. Aside from that, the phone holds the distinction of being the first smartphone in the world with a 4-axis OIS system, which is usually found in high-end cameras and DSLRs. The video below showcases the camera tech better than anything that we can come up with, so just watch the video below to see the difference:

The phone will have Android Marshmallow 6.0 on board, and Xiaomi’s MIUI 7 on board.

Three SKUs for the Mi 5 will be available – the highest end version, dubbed the Mi 5 Pro that has 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM will be RMB 2699, or around 19.6K. The mid-range version, the 3GB/64GB version will be priced at RMB 2299 or 16.7K while the entry level version that has a slower 1.8GHz clock speed, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage will be 14.5K.