Taking a break from the Atom X5 Z8300 tablets (I’m not reviewing anymore until the new Z8X50’s Cherry Trail revisions are released) I’ve ordered a few flagship Chinese mobiles to review the Le Pro 3 from LeEco, Xiaomi Mi 5S and the Mi 5S Plus. Yesterday my Xiaomi Mi5S arrived. Here’s the unboxing video, including an audio test and video test.
The Xiaomi Mi 5S’s build quality is very good, it feels stronger than the Mi 5 at least the non-ceramic one now without glass on the rear. With the alloy rear housing it feels good in hand, metal buttons but some plastic around the glass which has 2.5D edges. It also feels super slippery when your hands are cold and dry.But it’disappointing to see the large 12MP sensor meant the loss of optical image stabilization. All we have is digital image stabilization on 1080p and not 4k.
See my Galaxy S6 Edge+ vs Mi 5S camera comparison below:
Disappointing to see the large 12MP sensor meant the loss of optical image stabilization. All we have is digital image stabilization on 1080p and not 4k. So as a result 4k clips on the new 12MP larger sensor are shaky, almost useable for the most part unless you have super steady hands or a tripod. We also lost the IR transmitter the Mi5 has and no more MI logo on the front of the device. But we gained NFC support (finally) and slightly larger battery (Only 200mAh more)
The new ultrasonic fingerprint reader works flawless for me, i’ll have to test it out with wet fingers and even oil were it apparently will still work whereas the standard fingerprint readers would fail to read it.
So far my findings:
- Same 1080p screen as the Mi 5, that’s not a bad thing unless you plan to use VR (for VR we really need 4k)
- 3GB/64GB version of mine has 55GB free on first boot.
- An OTA straight away brings an update to the fingerprint reader
- The build is great, but still not quite as solid as the Galaxy S7 or iPhone 6/7 in terms of build quality. But for the price it’s still very decent.
- The Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 absolutely flies, this thing with UFS 2.0 storage is very, very quick.
- MIUI 8 out of the box (finally, the Redmi Pro and Redmi Note 4 still had MIUI 7)
- The UFS 2.0 storage is very quick, a crazy 400 mb/s reads and 180.mbs writes. That’s almost sata3 SSD speeds!
- PCmark battery life test finished last night with a result better than my Mi 5 of 8 hours 55 minutes. The Mi5S got 9 hours and 59 minutes with an on-screen time of around 8 hours and 30 minutes. I feel that is a very decent score considering it;s 5.15 inches and has a 3200mAh battery and a beast of a chipset the SD 821.
- Front camera tends to overexpose and the rear camera as expected takes better phones but the lack of OIS is a real shame. Bit rate of clips and the audio bitrate should be higher. Xiaomi still has a lot of work to do optimizing the cameras. 4k has focus hunting, breathing issues and artifacts from post processing with recording single colors like the blue sky or a white fence.
I’ll have more on this mobile and others soon as I take a break from the “ground hog day” Atom Z8300 tablets, which are now basically all the same.
If you’re wondering how I got the phone so fast, I got it from Goldway from Aliexpress here. One of about 5 sellers I truly trust that deliver as promised among the fake sellers and liers giving out fake tracking info. And if you want to use PayPal I recommend using Gearbest, Mi5S listing. And the Mi5S Plus listing on GB.