Xiaomi has unveiled the much-awaited Mi 5s along with a Mi 5s Plus. The flagship smartphones are powered by the latest Snapdragon 821 processor. While the Mi 5s comes with a single rear camera, the bigger Mi 5s Plus sports a dual lens set-up. Both the handsets feature four color choices, namely Rose Gold, Gold, Silver, and Grey. The Xiaomi Mi 5s is priced at 1999 Yuan (Rs. 19,920 / $299 approx.) and the Mi 5s Plus costs 2299 Yuan (Rs, 22,900 / $345 approx.). They will go on sale from September 29 in China.
The newest smartphones from Xiaomi come with high-end specifications while featuring a very affordable price tag. The Mi 5s and the Mi 5s Plus are premium looking handsets with an Aluminum unibody construction. There is a new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor in the Mi 5s, which is integrated with the screen itself. There is no physical key, but there is a force feedback motor which simulates the feeling of a mechanical button. It is similar to the one present in the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus.
The Xiaomi Mi 5s sports a 5.15-inch Full HD 1080p display, while the Mi 5s Plus sports a larger 5.7-inch unit. Xiaomi has used high-quality display panels with up to 600 nits’ brightness levels and 95 percent NTSC color gamut. Both are 2.5D curved screens. The company hasn’t disclosed the type of protective display glass it has used for any of the smartphones.
Speaking of performance, the top of the line Snapdragon 821 chip powers both the phones. This is the latest and the most powerful processor from Qualcomm. The quad-core 64-bit SoC. Packs in four high-end Kyro cores. Two of the cores run at a maximum clock speed of 2.15 GHz each while the remaining pair can go up to 1.6 GHz. An overclocked Adreno 530 handles the graphics.
Storage wise, there are two variants of both the Mi 5s and 5s Plus. The lower version features 3 GB LPDDR4 RAM along with 64 GB UFS 2.0 memory while the higher one increases the RAM to 4 GB and the storage to 128 GB. However, the Mi 5s Plus comes with more RAM and has 4GB in the base model and 6 GB in the top variant with the same 64 GB and 128 GB inbuilt memories respectively. The high-end flagships run Xiaomi’s own MIUI 8 User Interface on top of Android.
The most interesting part of the newly launched handsets lies in its camera hardware. The Mi 5s sports a 13 MP rear camera with a big 1/2.3” sensor. This is the latest and greatest Sony IMX378 which is also expected to feature in Google’s upcoming Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. The Xiaomi Mi 5s boasts a comparatively large pixel size of 1.55μm and excellent low light shooting capability. This may be one of the finest camera phones currently on the market.
On the other hand, the Mi 5s Plus sports a dual lens set-up with two 13 MP camera. These are also manufactured by Sony and provide outstanding photo clarity. Xiaomi claims that the Mi 5 Plus is an expert in capturing black and white images under low light. This may suggest that the Leica camera unit of the Huawei P9 may have inspired the company. Another good thing is that Xiaomi has managed to cut out the camera bump completely and the smartphone can peacefully lie on its back.
The brand new flagships come with the usual set of connectivity options with 4G LTE along with VoLTE (Voice over LTE), dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C, NFC, etc. While the smaller Mi 5s sports the new generation 3D touch fingerprint reader, the Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus comes with a traditional fingerprint scanner located at the back, below the dual camera unit. Regarding the battery capacity, the smaller device sports a 3200mAh cell, and a 3800mAh unit juices up the bigger phone.
As of now, Xiaomi will sell the new devices only inside China through the official Mi Store, Mijiia and also JD.com. The Mi 5s will retail at 1999 Yuan (Rs. 19,920 / $299 approx.) for the 3 GB / 64 GB variant and 2299 Yuan (Rs, 22,900 / $345 approx.) for the 4 GB / 128 GB model. The bigger Mi 5s Plus will be available at 2299 Yuan (Rs, 22,900 / $345 approx.) for 4 GB / 64 GB version, while the 6 GB / 128 GB one will cost 2599 Yuan (Rs. 25,905 / $390). The sale will begin from the date of September 29, 2016.
