Mi5 – smooth lines and so much more

Meet the rising star in the Xiaomi range, the flagship smartphone, the Mi5. Sleek in design and easy to use, I fell for this little gadget quite hard. Using the smartphone came quite naturally and there was no faffing or learning the ropes before making use of the device. As most of us know, security on the wake-up of a phone uses numbers and/or finger prints. The Mi5 takes that a little bit further and gives you options – we like options. Fingerprint and/or number or fingerprint and/or password. I opted for the password and stupidly chose something tedious to key in – it’s my own fault and made me grateful that the fingerprint was still an option.

The Mi5 is very easy on the eye with smooth lines, vibrant colours and great sound. Be careful putting the device down though, this smooth operator has a tendency to try to escape on surfaces that aren’t flat.

But how could you resist the Xiaomi’s next generation? It’s just beautiful.

The phone features a 5.15-inch 1080p display, 32GB storage capacity, Snapdragon 820 chipset, 16-megapixel rear camera, 4-megapixel selfie camera, dual-SIM card slots, 4G LTE, IR Blaster and USB Type-C port.

There were a few things I noticed about this smartphone that stood out to me during the time I reviewed it. The sound was crystal clear, and chatting on the phone became less of a task and something I preferred doing. Then again, typing was quite seamless too. The taking of pictures, switching of apps, opening of email or google was fast. Anything else that could sometimes leave you feeling like your phone had taken to freezing was null and void in the case of Mi5.

I was quite surprised at the price of the Mi5 which is available for R7 999 from www.miafrica.com/za or Makro, DionWired, Game, Takealot.com and Incredible Connection.

To be frank this phone should be called the MI5 (spoken as: em eye five) and is nothing short of what James Bond would want in his back pocket, well that’s if he could control some kind of sleep serum from it.

The phone

16MP camera

The main camera has 16Mpx resolution and allows to take 5312х2988 pix pictures. It is constructed with the combination of 6 different lenses. Outstanding technical characteristics combined with autofocus and optical stabilization functions allow to make excellent quality photos and videos.

4MP front camera

Connectivity

Wireless connectivity

Bluetooth 4.2

Dual band

Wi-Fi Display

Wi-Fi Direct

Wi-Fi: a/b/g/n/ac wireless Internet, 5GHz bands

Battery

CPU/ memory/ battery

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996

Qualcomm Adreno 530, 624 MHz

Dual Core 1.8 GHz Kryo & Dual-core 1.6 GHz Kryo

3GB RAM

1333 MHz

32GB

3000 mAh, Li-Polymer

Non-removable Li-Po 3000 mAh battery

Dual Sim (NanoSIM Dual Standby)

Display

5.15-inch

1920 x 1080 pixel resolution,

IPS

24 bit

Operating System

MIUI V7

Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Sensors and Navigation

GPS

A-GPS

GPS+GLONASS

BeiDou Navigation

Size

69.2mm (l) x 7.25mm (w) x 144.6mm (h)

Weight

129g

What’s in the Package?

Handset, Charger, Data Cable, Warranty Card and User Manual