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Xiaomi Mi 5 prototype out in the wild |
Chinese company Xiaomi has quickly grown to become one of the world's 5 biggest phone makers, but this growth is due mostly to its huge presence in Asia, while in the United States and most of the Western world, Xiaomi phones are not even officially sold. Nonetheless, when a company this big is preparing to release its flagship phone, the world watches in interest. Even more so given the fact that after the successful Xiaomi Mi 4, the company went throughout the whole of 2015 without releasing its successor.
The reason for this delay might have had something to do with countless issues with the overheating Snapdragon 810 system chip, but whatever the reason, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is finally ready for prime time: the company has confirmed that it will unveil it officially to the world on February 22nd.
Xiaomi is big in China, but still not likely to sell its phones in the United States
Today, nearly a month before the big announcement, though, a trust-worthy image showing a prototype of the Xiaomi Mi 5 has surfaced in Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblog.The Mi 5 looks sleek, somewhat reminiscent to the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, with its screen curving towards the sides of the phone. We would not, however, necessarily conclude that Xiaomi is copying Samsung. In fact, the Xiaomi Mi Note is a phone that featured similar design and was released a few months before the Galaxy S6 series.
What else does this image tell us? It seems that the phone has a metal frame (you can see there is a plastic stripe at the top, which is necessary on metal phones, so that they have better signal reception), and it looks fairly thin. There is also a physical home key (most likely, with a fingerprint scanner embedded in it), and what looks like an infra-red beamer at the top.
Xiaomi Mi 5 rumored specs
What else do we know about the Xiaomi Mi 5? First, the company is expected to release the phone in two versions that are said to differ in the materials they use. The more affordable model is said to have a metal frame sandwiched between two slabs of glass on the back and the front, while the pricier one is said to have a metal back in lieu of the glass. The more affordable is also said to come with a 1080 x 1920-pixel display resolution and 3GB of RAM, while the costlier one should ship with a Quad HD display and 4GB of RAM.
For all the rest, the two are expected to share similar specs, here is a quick run-down:
Screen: 5.2-inch display
SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820
Platform: Android 6.0 Marhsmallow with MIUI 7.0
Cameras: 16-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel selfie cam
Battery: 3,600mAh
Other features: Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner
Renders and leaks of the Xiaomi Mi 5
Xiaomi Mi 5 prices
Finally, it is not yet clear what will the price be for the Xiaomi Mi 5. Initial rumors mentioned a price of $380 (2,500 yuan) for the base model and $455 (3,000 yuan) for the more advanced one, but most recently some have suggested that at least one model could be priced at the rather steep $530 (3,500 yuan). All of those are full retail prices, with no subsidies or contract agreements. Let us once again make it clear that those are the prices for China and China only, as the phone will not be sold officially in the United States.
