Xiaomi Mi 5 : WHAT'S NEW ...
Xiaomi Mi 5 : what's new ...
1 - price : 314.20€
2-SOFTWARE
Ordinarily we wouldn’t recommend a Xiaomi phone to anyone not familiar with Android and confident in tinkering because they take a fair amount of setup for UK use. Google Play isn’t preinstalled, and the keyboard and many of the apps are in Chinese.
Setup was much easier with the Mi 5: log into the Mi App Store and search for Google Play. Ignore the fact everything is in Chinese - just click on the top result to install it. It will prompt you to install Google Account Manager and Framework Services and so on, then bring up the usual Google login screen you would normally see when first turning on an Android phone. It took around half an hour for our Google account to activate, but we were then able to install apps from Google Play as usual. We recommend you start with the Chrome browser and Google Keyboard, and remember to change the phone’s automatic time zone setting from Chinese.
The first thing you’ll notice about MIUI 7, which is a heavily customised version of Android Marshmallow, is that there is no app tray - as with an iPhone, everything is placed on the home screen (you can tidy things up with folders by dragging apps on top of others). That includes quite a few Chinese apps that you won’t know what to do with: don’t worry, just drag their icon toward the top of the screen to uninstall them, then download familiar Google apps from Play.
3-CONNECTIVITY & EXTRAS
We touched on the Mi 5’s connectivity options earlier in this review, and they really are strong. We’d like to see the addition of microSD support, but there are more generous storage versions available without too much of a jump in price. (Plus it’s easy to add storage to Android.)
Something phone manufacturers still don’t get is that us Brits want dual-SIM phones just like the rest of the world. We’d like the opportunity to manage business- and personal numbers or home- and abroad plans on a single phone, too. The great news then is that Xiaomi’s Mi 5 is sold with dual-SIM (dual-standby - see what this means) compatibility as standard, and both Nano-SIM slots are capable of 4G (provided you’re not on O2 or GiffGaff as there’s no support for Band 20 LTE - see how to tell whether a phone is supported by your network).
Another ommision from a great many flagships but seen here in the Xiaomi Mi 5 is an IR blaster, while a NFC chip is also included that will let you take advantage of Android Pay (which is just around the corner for UK users).
Other connectivity highlights include the aforementioned fingerprint scanner, which works as well as any we’ve seen, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and GLONASS.
3-CAMERAS
The Xiaomi Mi 5 is fitted with a 16Mp Sony IMX298 camera, which is paired with a dual-LED flash. It supports 4K video, which is even better when you consider this phone has four-axis optical image stabilisation - given the right conditions, it’s capable of some tremendous video footage and stills.
The primary camera is protected with a sapphire glass lens, and also boasts of DTI tech (that's the same used in the iPhone 6S camera), phase-detection autofocus and f/2.0 aperture. Again, in good light it takes a fantastic shot, with vibrant colours and lots of detail (click on the images below to see at 100 percent and you can make out individual bricks and road names); as the light goes down things go a little soft and grainy. But the Mi 5 is very quick to focus, and supports some useful camera modes (including Manual mode) and real-time filters (one of which is ‘Japanese’).
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