Xiaomi Mi5 First Impressions!

The Xiaomi Mi5 is now official. Launched at the ongoing MWC ’16 in Barcelona,the long awaited flagship smartphone appears to be the phone that all the fans were hoping for! Packing enough specs and innovative features, it might be able to boost the sales volume to keep the Chinese manufacturer on top of the global charts for a while.
The device has been launched in China, with sales commencing from March 1. The company’s VP Hugo Barra has specifically mentioned that the phone will be launched pretty soon in India, though looking at the past few releases it won’t be until a few months from now.
Given the Mi5 is competitively priced, it’ll find a lot of takers in India which was the case with their previous flagships.

The Mi5 packs a 5.15-in Full-HD IPS display, weighing in at just 129g. Powering the phone is the latest Snapdragon 820, with 3GB/4GB RAM depending on the variant as it will retail in three different variants. The standard edition will have 32GB of on-board storage with 3GB RAM, the second variant will have the same amount of RAM but will come with 64GB storage. While the highest spec’d of the three, dubbed as Mi5 Pro, will have 4GB RAM and the full 128GB of storage.
The Mi5 runs Xiaomi’s MIUI 7 interface, which is based of Android Marshmallow 6.0, bundled with functions such as Doze and granular app permissions. Like most Chinese brands, the interface lacks an app drawer, so any apps that you download will appear directly on the home screen, where they can be grouped into folders, similar to iOS.

Also, the Mi5 packs a 16MP main camera with Sony’s IMX298 sensor. The camera integrates what Xiaomi touts as the 4-axis OIS
technology, which should ensure sharper images when taking moving pictures. On the front, we find a 4MP selfie camera with f/2.0 lens capable of wide angle photos.
The Mi5 carries a 3000 mAh battery, which should be able to juice up the device for a long time, combined with Marshmallow’s Doze and the more optimized Snapdragon 820. It also supports Quick Charge 3.0, which promises an 80-90 percent battery charge in an hour.It also supports 4G connectivity as well as dual-SIM capability and VoLTE, which guarantees better audio quality in voice calls.
The phone comes with a 3D ceramic glass back, available in Black, White & Gold. With prominent curved edges on the back, and a physical home button with integrated fingerprint sensor, it seems like a few design cues have been taken from Samsung’s Galaxy S series and the OnePlus 2. The power/lock button as well as the volume rockers are placed on the right of the device, speaker grill rests at the bottom with the USB Type-C port in between and the 3.5mm headphone jack at the top beside the IR-blaster.

The Mi5 offers an elegant unibody design with equally capable performance due to its processor and GPU. NFC and the fingerprint scanner are valuable additions, enhancing user experience.
All these spec’s seem to be really promising on paper, but only real world tests will prove the Mi5’s abilities. What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments below.