The
Xiaomi Mi 5s one of many beastly smartphones likely to drop this side of the new year. Today just saw the launch of the
cheap-yet-mighty LeEco Le Pro 3, and Huawei is expected to roll out
the all-singing Mate 9 during the month of November. The Xiaomi Mi 5s has been
spotted in the wild a few times now, and like the new LeEco phab, is expected to pack Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821 chipset along with Adreno 530 graphics and 6 GB of RAM. Devices with such powerful innards usually leave a trail of smoke as they blitz through benchmarking apps, and the Mi 5s appears to have racked up an impressive 164,002 score on AnTuTu.
Benchmarks, particularly unverified, pre-release benchmarks, can only be taken as a guideline as to a handset's real-world performance. We've seen many a powerful smartphone stutter and lag due to poor software and optimization in the past, so we can't get too carried away with the Mi 5s just yet. Still, in a year that has seen the Snapdragon 820 and 4 GB RAM established as the de facto flagship standard, it looks like the high-end specs race is being taken up a notch or two.
Along with Qualcomm's latest high-end silicon,
previous specs leaks have indicated a 3490 mAh battery with Qualcomm fast charge 3.0, USB-Type C and a 16-megapixel main camera with PDAF and f/1.8 aperture. There's also been
suggestions of 3D touch support with the display, though this particular feature could be reserved for the
Mi Note 2.
In essence, the Mi 5s seems a like-for-like alternative to the new LeEco Le Pro 3, though it'll be interesting to see whether Xiaomi plans to match the sub-$300 price point of its rival.
The Mi 5s will likely grace us with its presence in a week's time, with September 27th having been touted on numerous occasions as a launch date. We'll surely see a leak or ten before then, however, so stay tuned.
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