Xiaomi is one of the more interesting smartphone OEMs out there. This China-based company was actually founded back in 2010, and they managed to become China’s number one OEM in less than 5 years. The company is currently over 5 years old, and they’ve recently expanded their business to Brazil, which is the first area of the world outside of Asia that Xiaomi is officially selling their smartphones. The company managed to sell 61 million smartphones last year, and has sold 34.7 million in the first half of this year. Xiaomi’s sales goal for this year is 80-100 million shipped smartphones, and by the looks of it, they still have a shot at it.
That being said, Xiaomi has released quite a few phones this year, along with some additional smart gadgets, but most consumers are still waiting for them to release their new flagship, the Mi 5. Speaking of the Mi 5, we’ve seen quite a few leaks thus far, and the Mi 5 is not the only version that has been mentioned. The Mi 5 Plus was also mentioned quite a few times, and it’s basically a bigger variant of the Mi 5, at least according to the latest available info. As a side note, Xiaomi has already released two flagships earlier this year, back in January the company has unveiled the Mi Note and Mi Note Pro handsets. Those two phablets are sporting high-end specs, but the two upcoming handsets are going to be on that very same level, if not above it.
Speaking of the leaked info, let’s check out what specifications these two handsets are said to sport. The Mi 5 will reportedly sport a 5.2-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) display along with 3GB of RAM and a 3,000mAh battery. The 16-megapixel camera will be located on the back of this thing, and a 13-megapixel snapper will be available up front. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 SoC will allegedly fuel the Mi 5, and a fast-charging feature was also mentioned. The Mi 5 is said to sport a fast charging capability which will let you charge the phone up from 0 to 30% in 40 minutes. What about the Mi 5 Plus? Well, that thing will definitely be the most powerful handset Xiaomi has ever released, if the leaked specs are to be believed that is. The Mi 5 Plus will feature a 5.7-inch QHD panel along with 4GB of RAM and a 3,500mAh battery. The Mi 5 Plus will reportedly be powered by the Snapdragon 820 64-bit SoC, and a 23-megapixel OIS rear-facing shooter has also been mentioned.
You can also expect these two phones to be made out of metal, and unfortunately we don’t have any more spec info to share with you. That being said, we’re also expecting Xiaomi to push the boundaries in terms of software and the design of this handset. There’s nothing wrong with Xiaomi’s design at the moment, but it’s starting to feel a bit outdated considering the capacitive buttons below the display, not to mention the menu capacitive button. Xiaomi will hopefully realize that they need to step it up and manufacture something that will awe people, though that’s just my opinion, as I said, there’s generally nothing wrong with Xiaomi’s design.
What about the software? Well, MIUI is a very functional Android-based OS, but Xiaomi can always take a step forward and improve it. This OS / skin is definitely not the best offering out there, and there’s always room for improvement, so it is going to be interesting to see what will Xiaomi do in this regard. It is possible that they make only minor changes this time, but we’re always hoping for huge improvements, we’ll see. Xiaomi has come to a point where people expect great things from them, so the expectations for these two devices are really huge. We still don’t know when will Xiaomi showcase the two devices, but they’re holding an event on July 16th, so it’s possible that’s the launch event, we’ll find out soon enough.