Fans of Xiaomi in India have some fantastic news headed their way — the company is poised to launch the Xiaomi Mi 5 flagship smartphone in the country on March 31.
Come Thursday, Xiaomi will debut its much-awaited Android-powered Mi 5 smartphone — the successor of the Xiaomi Mi 4 — which houses the latest Snapdragon 820 processor. The news was confirmed on Monday by Xiaomi when it sent out a press invite for the March 31 event.
"We are glad to share that we will be announcing the Mi 5 in India on Thursday, 31st March 2016," reads the media invite.
True to its promise — earlier in March at the launch of the Redmi Note 3 in the country, CEO Hugo Barra had revealed that the Mi 5 handset would be "coming to India in a month" — Xiaomi is releasing the smartphone for Indian consumers.
Xiaomi launched the Mi 5 in Beijing, China in February this year. With the arrival of the flagship smartphone in India, it will become one of the initial markets to retail the smartphone outside its home country.
The fact that the handset notched up four million units at a flash sale in China, as we reported, bears testimony to the popularity of the Xiaomi Mi 5. In March, Barra also disclosed that Xiaomi had received 16.8 million registrations for the Xiaomi Mi 5 in China.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 is available in three variants: standard (3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage), prime (3 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage) and pro (4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage). However, whether the Chinese smartphone maker will release all three variants in India is not clear.
Weighing just 129 gms (4.56 oz), the Xiaomi Mi 5 sports a 5.15-inch FHD screen with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. Its display boasts a curved 3D ceramic glass, and the pixel density of the Xiaomi Mi 5 is 428ppi.
Under the hood, the Xiaomi Mi 5 houses the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, as well as Adreno 530 GPU. The handset packs in a 16 MP primary camera. The selfie camera is 4 MP.
A 3000 mAh battery powers the handset and also offers support for Quick Charge 3.0, which is 20 percent faster than Quick Charge 2.0. It also has a USB Type-C port and supports Wi-Fi, NFC, VoLTE, Glonass, Bluetooth 4.2 and 4G.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 will cost anywhere between Rs 20,000 ($300) and Rs 27,000 ($405), as disclosed by Bin Lin, the company's President. With March 31 a few days away, we will soon know whether or not all three variants of the Xiaomi Mi 5 will make their India debut.
