Xiaomi Mi 5 Review

HelloitsLuke · February 13, 2017

This is a review of a somewhat old product, but nonetheless I will give my thoughts on it for potential buyers

I've owned this phone for >6 months now. This has replaced my old IPhone 5 and here are the things I like and dislike.

Likes:

• Decent Screen. At 5.1 inches, you can't really go wrong with a 1080p panel. Throughout my use the screen never failed to make content consumption/playing games eye-catching.

• Great Processor. This thing uses a baseline Snapdragon 820 clocked at 1.8 Ghz. Paired with the Adreno 530 GPU , you won't have problems running the good games on android

• Mi UI. This is very subjective. I personally came from an apple phone, and I was perfectly fine without the add drawer (and other native android UI). But I gotta Xiaomi props because they have ,imo, the most polished skin of Android. MI UI 8, the latest version is somewhat of an "Apple clone" but packs all the good features that an Android phone has.

• Outstanding Battery Life. At 3000 mAh, this thing packs a ton. Given a decent usage (Few hours of Youtube content and gaming, daily communication), I can manage to squeeze almost a day and a half before ever needing to charge my Mi 5.

• Quickcharge. The package comes with a QuickCharge 2.0 compliant charger, which does a good and somewhat fast job to charge my phone. I can go 0 to 70% in about 40-45 min charge.

• Price to performance. We bought this at around $250 from China, and it sure does give the higher tier companies' flagships (Samsung, Apple, Huawei) a run for their money. At this price point, this is definitely a rare gem.

• Decent Mobile Data connection. I'm aware it does not support America LTE, but here in our region LTE is supported on the Mi 5. Tried using the same data connection on my dad's 6+, and the Mi 5 fared quite well.

Dislikes:

• No SD card expansion. This isn't a deal breaker for me since the phone already sports a 32 GB built-in storage, but for heavy storage users this might be something worth noting.

• Random slowdowns. I personally like my apps snappy and not that buggy, which this unit seems to not exhibit well. Given that I've only used 2.1/3 GB of the total RAM, the phone does throttle pretty badly, forcing me to clear some background apps that I might actually jump to and fro from.

• Camera. Sure it's a decent 16 MP camera. But the shots I've gotten looked pale and sub-par compared to the IPhone 6-Plus that my dad has.

• A CRAP ton of BLOATWARE. Having this phone bought from China, there was a ton of unnecessary apps installed. I'd suggest flushing the China ROM and installing the Global ROM.

• Slippery af. This phone has a glass back, which is nice to hold but VERY slippery indeed. You may want to consider getting a non-slip case.

• No Android updates. This comes stock with 6.0.1 Marshmallow, and I doubt Xiao Mi would be getting any of those, given that the Mi UI already updates once in a while.

To summarize, the Mi 5 has been a worthy upgrade from my IPhone 5 (My first owned phone), and I'd gladly recommend it to anyone who's trying to get into the flagship line of phones without breaking the bank. But if you can spare a bit more money, you may want to consider getting the later edition Mi 5S, which sports a Snapdragon 821. On the other hand, if this would be too steep of a price still, may wanna take a look at the Redmi Note 4/ Note 4 Pro.