Xiaomi is one of the largest phone manufacturers in Asia Pacific. Their phones are generally very good budget propositions for people looking into a phone that has all the latest features that doesn’t break the bank. Xiaomi is also no foreigner among in our Indian soil. Their phones are in very high demand constantly and even now the demand outpaces the supply as most of the time they become available in flash sales among Indian e-commerce distributors and remain out of stock for the rest of the time.
What makes Mi gather such fans is the fact that it knows how to compete in a challenging market like India. Mi almost gets their pricing right everytime and their specifications are always right up there to scare off the big guns. Clearly Mi does know what the people want in a budget and then makes their devices accordingly that it isn’t a compromise in a given budget. Now such a device is precisely what seems to coming out in a few days, so let’s look at an overview of the device prior to its launch.
If you have been following Xiaomi online, then you might have come across a device named the Mi 5X. It will be one of budget flagships for Mi India when it launches. So, without further ado, let’s delve into this forthcoming phone from Xiaomi.
Design and Display:
Scans and leaks show that the new Xiaomi Mi 5X will be closely based on the Xiaomi Mi A1, so we can say that gives us a good idea of what the phone might look like. It’ll have a nice unibody aluminium construction with beautiful rounded edges. This will probably be one of the best looking Mi Phones after the Mi6, which was total head turner. Analysing the scans, we can also conclude that the phone will have three standard touch sensitive buttons for the Home, Task Manager and Back button which is pretty standard among all Mi Phones. It’ll also have a rear fingerprint sensor for security. The dimensions of the phone also appear to be quite compact, measuring at 155.4 x 75.8 x 7.3 mm(Height x Width x Thickness), which is quite compact and easy to handle.
The Display will be 5.5 inch across and feature a resolution of 1080p, with a pixel density of 401ppi which is excellent. The display will feature an AMOLED panel which will be a first for a device in this price bracket. AMOLED displays offer nice vivid colours and good saturation and also feature the darkest black levels among any display panel.
Performance:
The Mi 5X will pack in a Snapdragon 625 which is a 64 bit octacore (8 Cores) processor with a frequency of 2GHz. This is a proven workhorse among budget phones and currently offers the best performance in its class. This chip also features the Adreno 506 GPU that is both fast and power efficient for gaming and multimedia purposes.
It’ll also feature 4GB of RAM which will ensure a lag free operation for the most part. Other than that the phone will feature an array of sensors like Light sensor, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Compass, Gyroscope and so on.
Software:
On the OS front it’ll feature Android v7.1.1 (Nougat) out of the box which currently the latest stable offering from android as we are still sometime away from Android O. And while its similar cousin the Mi A1, feature a stock version of android, this will be shipped with their MiUi 8 skin, which could be a hit or miss depending on your preference. Also unlike the A1, the 5X will ship with a lot of preinstalled apps from the factory which the A1 doesn’t.
While I don’t have any particular complaints about the MiUi, but stock android is always better as we have the freedom to choose what apps we want to keep.
Camera and Storage:
Perhaps the party piece of the Mi 5X is its dual rear camera setup. It’s a dual 12+12MP setup like on the A1 and one of them has a wide angle lens, while the other has a telephoto lens. The two cameras are used in conjunction to produce pictures that have a depth of field or more commonly known as the Bokeheffect wherein the subject is kept in focus and the background is blurred out. The front camera is of 5MP. As per the A1’s reviews, the camera is a decent performer and you should expect it to be the same for this. It also has a dual LED assisted flash for the camera that should help you click images in challenging lighting conditions.
Storage wise, it has 64 GB of internal memory along with an option for expanding it to 128GB more which is nice in my opinion. However, the memory slot is hybrid which means either a sim or a memory card can fit into the slot. But the provided 64 GB should be plenty enough for most needs and users might get away with not having to rely on a memory card with a careful selection of the contents that they want to keep.
Battery and Connectivity:
It has a Li-Polymer 3080mAh battery which should be enough to give you a full day’s worth of charge. The energy efficient processor helps deeply in this regard and staying on for a day with medium to heavy usage should be fine.
As for connectivity, it supports all the major frequencies available, namely 4G (VOLTE), 3G and 2G bands that are supplied by the Indian Telecom giants. Along with that it also has support for Wi-Fi 802.11, a/ac/b/g/n/n 5GHz, Bluetooth v4.2 and GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS support.
The Verdict:
So summing up, the Xiaomi Mi 5X is certainly a very interesting contender for the budget mobile phone segment. It’s good specifications and dual camera setup makes it a definite recommendation for anyone looking for a phone in a medium price bracket. The Xiaomi Mi 5X price in India is expected to be around Rs.14990 which is a very competitive pricing as it’ll compete with the Moto G5 Plus which is priced similarly. Which phone the consumers prefermost is yet to be seen?
