China’s top phone maker Xiaomi unveils new Mi 5

However, aside from these major flagship phones, there is one hidden gem that will surely surprise countless people this year, the Xiaomi Mi 5.

Unlike past Mi phones, the Mi 5 features a physical home button on the front, much like the Galaxy S phones, which also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner.

Weighing just 129 g, the phone packs in a 300mAh battery and a 16 megapixel rear camera with 4-axis optical image stabilisation and 4K video recording. Color options include black, gold, pink and white.

The Xiaomi Mi 5 boots on Android Marshmallow with MIUI 7 on top of it. It has a 3,000 mAh battery with faster Quick Charge 3.0 feature. The phone is the successor to Mi4, which was launched two years ago. This particular model comes equipped with a 1.8GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, an Adreno 530 graphics processing unit, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The premium version will feature a 3D ceramic back cover, and it will be powered by a 2.15 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

But the company was now being forced to look beyond the People’s Republic, as the market there became saturated.

For the 32GB internal storage variant of the Xiaomi Mi 5 you will need to pay about 262 dollars, but if you want to get the 128GB internal storage variant of the handset, you will spend around 354 dollars.

Staying with Xiaomi’s strategy of undercutting global giants like Samsung and Apple, the Mi 5 aims to provide speedy processing and light weight at a relatively low cost. It will also support 4G LTE connectivity, which was absent from the original Mi 4 handset, although, company did introduced a 4G LTE variant. In contrast with the Mi 4, the Mi 4s’ front snapper has been downgraded to 5-megapixel.

The Xiaomi Mi 5 will hit the stores in China on March 1, 2016. However, don’t be too thrilled about it, as Xiaomi will start selling it in China initially, and it’s not even clear whether the phone will make it to other worldwide markets. But it possess the same advanced technological design that is used in other expensive mobie devices.