Look and feel
From a design perspective, Mi 5 looks very good; the curved 3D glass back, the metal frame on the side, the way Xiaomi has managed to keep this phone feeling incredibly thin and light are all points in its favour.
Other than the design, the phone’s 5.15-inch full HD display is impressive. It’s vivid, colours are fairly accurate and the blacks are deep. Personally, I prefer smartphones with smaller screens, and so the Mi 5 appeals to someone like me. Be it HD gaming, watching videos on Netflix, the display is perfect I’d say. Sure it’s not 2K display like the S7 edge, but it’s not a difference you are likely to feel. Plus remember this phone costs half of the latter.
Specifications and software
The Xiaomi Mi 5 is the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 820-powered smartphone officially available in India. A notable change between the 820 and its predecessor the 810 is the fact that Qualcomm has decided to skip the core wars and go back to a more efficient quad-core architecture.
There’s also 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, support for VoLTE, NFC, an infrared emitter, and Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 compatibility. Charging is quick even with a 2.0-compatible charger, and you can juice the phone up in less than 90 minutes.
The 16 megapixel rear camera gives pretty good results in daylight, well-lit rooms, though the low-light performance is not so good. I liked the results from the selfie camera, and I’d say this is a smartphone camera you can whip out at dinner to take group photos, and expect some good results.