Newsletter 
Xiaomi may not necessarily be the most widely recognizable name in the world of consumer tech in most regions around the world, but the company is one of the most popular smartphone vendors in its home country of China. The company has only recently been surpassed by Huawei as the largest vendor of smartphones and tablets in the country, but that has as much to do with Huawei’s stellar products and smart marketing, as with Xiaomi’s inability to come up with newer smartphones and tablets to refresh its aging lineup. While the next generation flagship smartphone from Xiaomi, the Mi 5, has long been rumored to launch at some stage this fall, the company is now believed to be prepping the launch of its Mi Pad tablet replacement sooner than many would have expected, at least if the latest reports are to be believed.
On Thursday, the co-founder and president of Xiaomi Technology, Mr. Lin Bin, teased the impending launch of the second generation flagship phablet from the company, predictably dubbed the Mi Pad 2. It is believed that Xiaomi will unveil the tablet officially on the 24th of this month along with the Redmi Note 2 Pro, which was also teased by Mr. Lin on his Weibo account just a day earlier. As for the image posted by Mr. Lin, it can be seen above. The image seems to show a corner of the tablet, revealing the device will have rounded edges. There is, what looks to be a rear-facing camera in the corner, but without an accompanying flash of any description. Two physical buttons can be seen on one side as well, which could very well be the power button and volume rocker. That however, is pretty much all there is to it at the moment, so we’ll really have to wait at least another few days to get a more definitive picture.
Previous leaks have suggested that the upcoming tablet from Xiaomi will feature a 7.9-inch display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, which is the exact same as the original Mi Pad from last year. The tablet was listed on the GeekBench database earlier this month, revealing that it will indeed come with Intel’s Atom X5-Z8500 chipset under the hood, as rumored earlier. The device will reportedly have 2 GB of RAM installed and run Android 5.1.1 Lollipop under the hood. The Mi Pad 2 has also been rumored to launch in two different versions – one running on Android and another on Windows 10. While not much else is known about the upcoming device, the launch date is only next Tuesday if reports are to be believed, so we may not have to wait too long to get an official word on the hardware and software on the Mi Pad 2 from Xiaomi.