Xiaomi Mi 5 Price: Starts at $300 in China

Xiaomi launched the Mi 5, the latest flagship smartphone from the Chinese tech giant, on 24 February at the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona.

Weighing 129 grams, the Mi 5 is about 14 g lighter than the iPhone 6s. The unveiling ceremony also revealed that the Xiaomi Mi 4S will be available from March for 1,699 Yuan ($260).

Barra said the company sold 70 million devices globally in 2015 and was the largest online brand in China. After that it’s headed to India and a handful of other countries where Xiaomi sells its phones, though for now that list still doesn’t include North America or Europe. It looks very similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 but Xiaomi VP, Hugo Barra said that the handset takes its inspiration from their older phablet, the Mi Note/Note Pro. Strangely, the 32GB Mi 5 gets a lower clock speed than its more endowed counterparts: 1.8GHz versus 2.15GHz. The basic Mi 5 has 32 GB of flash memory, 2 GB of RAM and a glass body.

Coming to the specifications, the Mi 5 packs a 5.1-inch full-HD IPS display, dual-SIM 4G with VoLTE, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, and a 3000mAh battery with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology. It will be available in black, gold, purple, and white colour options. Qualcomm was actually co-sponsoring Xiaomi’s launch event, and it was obvious – the keynote kicked off with 10 minutes dedicated to discussing the new processor. For a sleekly designed phone powered by Snapdragon’s best processor, that sounds like a bargain, but we’ll wait until we hear actual USA prices before we give final verdict on that.

Alongside the Mi 5, Xiaomi also made a surprise announcement of the Mi 4s, the third iteration of the company’s previous flagship, first launched 18 months ago.

We don’t yet know if you will have to register your interest in the Xiaomi Mi 5 on the likes of Snapdeal or Flipkart, but we will keep you informed the moment that news breaks. AP material published by LongIsland.com, isdone so with explicit permission.