Xiaomi Mi5

The first thing you'll notice about the Mi 5 is how familiar it looks when compared to the Mi Note. The glass back, lightweight metal frame and clean façade of the Mi Note have been adapted to the Mi 5's smaller footprint, with a few added curves in tow. Suffice to say, the Mi 5 is a gorgeous smartphone. The design exudes premiumness, right from the quality of materials used to the ergonomics (or as Xiaomi's Jai Mani insists on calling it, "hand-feel"). Our review unit was white, but you can also get it in black and gold. The black variant is definitely the sexiest of the trio, but the glass back panel can get smudgy after a while. We haven't checked out the gold unit yet, but the white variant looks elegant, and does a great job of masking fingerprints too.

The Xiaomi Mi 5 retains the full HD resolution display of the Mi 4, and this is ok. For a display size of 5.15-inches, 1080p more than does the job, and doesn't come with the battery compromises of a 2K screen. Interestingly, the reason Xiaomi opted for a 5.15-inch screen size instead of the standard 5-inches was to incorporate extra LEDs. There are 16 LEDs under the screen (check out this Mi 5 teardown for a closer look), which account for the display's high brightness of 600 nits. The brightness, coupled with Xiaomi's Sunlight Display tech, make for a screen that's clearly visible even under the harsh Bangalore sun. Displays have always been Xiaomi's forte (even the budget Redmi 2 has a lovely screen), and the Mi 5 is no exception. The saturation levels are high, owing to the high contrast ratio of 1:1500, and sharpness and touch response are superb. The icons and text sit very close to the screen thanks to the thin display panel, making for an exceptionally clear screen. Like the Redmi Note 3, the Mi 5 features a Reading Mode that cuts out the blue light for a more comfortable viewing experience, and a Night Mode that lets you turn the brightness down to very low levels for reading at night. There are also controls that let you fine tune the contrast and temperature. A layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protects the display against minor scratches and knocks. 

For the Mi 5's primary camera, Xiaomi has used a top-end Sony IMX298 sensor. The rear 16MP unit features a wide f/2.0 aperture, 4-axis optical image stabilisation and phase detection autofocus. The camera is also capable of shooting videos in 4K. The front camera is a 4 UltraPixel unit, utilising large 2-micron pixels to let in more light. The camera app is itself is the standard MIUI affair, with a large viewfinder and toggles for the flash, HDR and front camera. You can swipe down on the screen to bring up a range of filters that can be applied in real time, and swipe up to access the various shooting modes. Among those on offer you'll find Audio, Beautify, Fish-Eye, Timer, Tilt-shift, Panorama, Manual and Handheld Twilight (HHT). 

Of the three Mi 5 variants that were initially announced, it's unfortunate that Indian users are getting only the base model. Even though this version features the Snapdragon 820 chipset, it's underclocked to 1.8GHz. There's 3GB of RAM to work with, and 32GB of fixed storage (a little over 25GB user available). An Adreno 530 GPU handles gaming and graphics. We're aware that the top-end variant of the Mi 5 (called the Mi 5 Pro) with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a ceramic body is in limited supply even in China, but we would have appreciated having at least the 64GB option available in India, considering there's no microSD card on any of the models.