Xiaomi’s latest flagship, the Mi5 will soon debut in the Indian market. With a big buzz in global arena, the Chinese giant is expected to give OnePlus, Lenovo and all other players, a long run for their money in the Indian arena. We all have already seen how good Mi5 can be when it comes to performance and reliability. The device stands out in all aspects and brings a perfect balance of good looks and performance at an absolutely hard-to-believe price tag.
However, despite this, the question that remains unanswered is, what are the things that got changed from Mi4 to Mi5? The predecessor of Xiaomi Mi5 was a powerful choice which got faded against the likes of newcomers. The device had everything, but unfortunate for Xiaomi, it couldn’t make into the world of premium flagships with subtle perfection. Keeping both of them side by side, many things came to our notice, some of which are-:
Design Language
The design of Mi5 is a major upgrade over Mi4. The iPhone like speaker grill is still on the bottom, but the back has been crafted like a tweaked edition of Galaxy S6 and S7. The phone looks like a sandwich of Gorilla Glass 4, with metal in between and on the sides. The slight curve from the back turning towards the sides makes the phone easy to hold and carry, and the new elongated centre placed home-button adds a further touch class with utility of biometric security.
On whole, taking from the outside, the new Mi5 looks very different from Mi4. The touch of plastic on-the back is long gone now, and the overall profile of the phone has been reduced by a significant margin. In fact, not just being light and slim, it feels premium in every way!
Display and Visual Experience
Though a small increase in screen-size reduces pixel density, it does not affect the colour output, viewing angles or sunlight legitimacy by any means. The company, instead of giving a 5.1-inch display, has switched to a slightly bigger 5.15-inch panel, but with the same 1080p screen-resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It delivers crisp, punchy and vibrant colours in all environments, and endows a complete flagship experience without any snags. In a nutshell, it makes up a perfect device for gaming or watching videos at home or even during a road-trip under broad daylight!
Performance and Hardware
For performance, a bunch of under-the-hood upgrades have been introduced in the new Mi5. Both handsets incorporate top-tier processors and powerful GPUs, but that two-year gap in between, draws a fine line of difference and counts a lot. The dated Mi4 runs on a quad-core Snapdragon 801 SoC with 3GB RAM and Adreno 330 graphics, while the new Mi5 unleashes immense amount of power with the latest flagship from Qualcomm, Snapdragon 820, 3/4GB RAM, and Adreno 530 GPU. It’s a beast of a device and is nearly as good as the all new Samsung Galaxy S7.
Individually, both phones are pretty impressive, but head to head, the new Xiaomi Mi5 is a far better, smooth and power-efficient.
Software
On the software front, there are some good things as well as some bad things. The good thing is Xiaomi has finally moved to the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow, while the bad news is, it still features the same MIUI 7 skin that ships with all Mi phones including the two-year old Mi4. In a nutshell, Mi5 will give you the latest iteration of Android but only for namesake. There are no new features to play with!
Camera
The camera of Mi5 is the biggest bump-up from Mi4. Instead of a commonly seen 13-megapixel shooter, Xiaomi has upgraded to a powerful 16-megapixel shooter with 1/2.8″ sensor size and an aperture as wide as f/2.0. The handset serves as an ideal camera device, and delivers crisp, vibrant, and colour rich images with a slew of mind-boggling features such as, four-axis optical image stabilization, phase detection and dual tone LED flash.
Contrarily, the pixel count on the front-facing snapper has been reduced to 4-megapixels from 8-megapixel. It looks weaker on paper, but the quality is just perfect!
Fingerprint scanner
Moving a step ahead, Mi5 boasts benefits of advanced bio-metric security with a snappy fingerprint scanner integrated with the home-button. The easy-to-reach fingerprint scanner performs smoothly and unlocks the handset just within half-a-second. It makes an essential addition into device security options, and above and beyond Mi4 with subtle perfection.
Battery
In terms of power efficiency, nothing’s changed from Mi4 to Mi5. The latest flagship from Xiaomi ships with a touch smaller 3000 mAh battery, but offers sufficient juice for seamless work and play. It goes neck and neck with its predecessor, and caters standard and heavy usage requirements without any snags or drainage issues. Therefore, no matter which game or movie you’re playing, there will enough power to keep things up and running throughout the day.
Pricing and availability
While the official India launch of Mi5 is still on the waitlist, the 16GB and 64GB variants of Mi4 are hitting the shelves successfully at Rs. 14,999 and Rs. 17,999. In global markets, the standard edition of Mi5 has been priced at $305, which in our opinion, will hit the shelves somewhere around Rs. 20,000. So Mi fans in India, there’s still a long-way to go!
Bottom Line
After a close head-to-head comparison, we feel Mi5 is a spectacular upgrade over Mi4. The dual-SIM based handset not only looks different but also performs seamlessly while running heavy games and apps. It endows top-notch performance with immense power-backup, and makes a great first-impression with its metal body, sharp display, and extremely powerful innards.
To sum up, we can say, it’s a value for money package with a perfect blend of all essential elements. It has everything that a flagship offers and looks stunning with Gorilla Glass 4 on the back and metal on the sides.