My review of the Xiaomi Mi 5S Smartphone - Snapdragon 821

[Redskulll]

The Xiaomi Mi 5S is definitely a good looking phone, but is it competitive enough in today's saturated market? Well, for starters, it doesn't cost $8-900 like a Google Pixel or an iPhone.

It is made out of metal and glass and looks very elegant and premium, the volume buttons do shake a bit but it isn't very noticeable.

The camera used on this phone is the exact 12MP Sony sensor used in the Google Pixel phone. We don't have optical image stabilization but the EIS works good enough for most situations. I have included some sample footage in the review video. Picture taking is fast and the pictures turn out very nicely, but not as nice as they turn out from the Google Pixel; so it has to do a lot with the software optimization.

We only have one mono speaker at the bottom of the phone, that gets loud enough, but nothing too special, at par with most flagships these days.

The 5.15" screen has a 1080P resolution and that is a bit disappointing. The viewing angles are great and the screen gets quite bright for usage in bright daylight but the bezels around the screen are a bit hideous. Now the software; we have Android 6.0.1 running on the Mi 5S with Xiaomi's skin on top. If you are a fan of iOS, you will most likely like it. No, app drawer and the camera app looks just like the one you would find on an iPhone. You can change theams, and customize the phone however you wish from the Mi theams store. We also get lots and lots of features that none of us will probably get to use... I would say that more useless features than you would find on a Samsung phone for example.

I wasn't impressed with the scores that i got for the Antutu benchmark and the Geekbench 4, and im sure it has to to with the Rom that came pre-installed on the device.

There is also a fingerprint scanner imbeded in the home button that seems to work well 95% of the time. It is quite accurate, but every now and than it just doesn't want to register any touches.

Inside the phone there is a 3100mAh battery that will last the entire day and with about 4h of screen on time, decent enough but not spectacular. For a phone that costs less than $350 i think that it offers quite a lot of value but it could be improved a bit here and there. The camera could take better pictures, the bezels around the screen could be smaller, the battery could last a bit longer. Check out the full review video for more information about the Xiaomi Mi 5S Smartphone! 

 

[another random person]

I'm using a mi note 3 and its pretty good.