The Xiaomi Mi 5 has been one of the most anticipated smartphones to ever come out of the Chinese manufacturer’s factory gates. Revealed at Mobile World Congress last month, the Xiaomi Mi 5 was initially planned for a market release earlier in 2015 but was delayed indefinitely due to issues linked with the Snapdragon 810 SoC. Now it looks like Xiaomi is preparing for the launch of the device outside of China, where 16.8 million prospective customers have already registered for the Xiaomi Mi 5 flash sale. The VP of Xiaomi Global, Hugo Barra, recently announced that the Xiaomi Mi 5 will also make its way to shelves in India this April.
The April launch timeframe for the Xiaomi Mi 5 in India was revealed earlier today during the launch of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 in the same region. But unlike the Redmi Note 3 which sits in the upper mid-range segment, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is a full-blown premium flagship phone, powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 820 SoC featuring four Kryo CPU cores and an Adreno 530 graphics chip. This is the same SoC used by both the LG G5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 series, at least where the aforementioned lineup isn’t powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 8890 chipset. In addition, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is equipped with a 5.15-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 and a pixel density of 428 ppi, 3 GB of RAM along with 32 or 64 GB of storage or 4 GB of RAM paired with 128 GB of internal memory, and a non-removable 3,000 mAh battery. The handset takes advantage of a 16-megapixel main camera with an f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus, a dual-LED two-tone flash, a 1/2.8-inch sensor, and 4-axis optical image stabilization. A 4 MP sensor sits on the front panel, offering an f/2.0 aperture and 1080p video recording capabilities.
Aside from the highly anticipated Xiaomi Mi 5, there was also a short announcement regarding the company’s extremely generous 20,000 mAh Mi Power Bank, which was given away to all attendees of the event. The battery pack will also be released in India soon, but as yet, no details regarding pricing and exact release / pre-order dates for either the Mi Power Bank or the Xiaomi Mi 5 have been revealed.
