Xiaomi's Mi 5 flagship phone has just been certified by China's regulators at a curious time, considering the smartphone maker is planning a bit of a show-and-tell session before a crowd of 500 next week.
The Beijing-based electronics company is already expected to unveil the pro version of its Redmi Note 2 at the event, scheduled for Nov. 24. Though, the device's specs showed up in Geekbench's database of hardware benchmarks.
Now three new Xiaomi devices have recently received China's 3C stamp. Two of those devices are believed to be versions of the Mi 5 and the other piece of hardware is likely the Redmi Note 2 Pro.
Xiaomi's Mi 5 is expected to have a 5-inch display, though the leaks thus far have clashed in suggesting that the resolution will either be 2K or 4K. The smartphone will run on the latest version of Android, Marshmallow, which should come as no surprise.
While those are rumors, what's pretty much certain is that the Mi 5 will be driven by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. The newest unveiled processor is expected to launch with Xiaomi's upcoming flagship phone, though other manufacturers will get a chance to ship devices with the top-shelf chip soon after.
Qualcomm indicated that handsets with the new processor won't ship until next year. So even if the Mi 5 is unveiled on Nov. 24, there'll be at least a month-long wait before the phone will ship, or the wait might be longer for other regions.
While details about the Mi 5 have been hard to come by, much more is known about the Redmi Note 2 Pro. That's because it's pretty much the Redmi Note 2 with a few buffs.
The pro version of the Redmi Note 2 comes with a metal back and a fingerprint scanner. Elsewhere, the Redmi Note 2 Pro is driven by the same 2.0 GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6795 Helio X10 SoC as the core version. There has been a buzz that it will be available in either 2 GB and 3 GB RAM configurations and starts out with 16 GB of storage space. It might have a 13 MP rear camera and a 5 MP chat camera, too.
Photo: Jon Russell | Flickr
