Xiaomi Mi 5 review blog: A good phone, but prone to heating

Watch our first look video the Xiaomi Mi 5

At the India launch event, Xiaomi’s global VP Hugo Barra revealed that they spent two years working on the smartphone. For Xiaomi, there’s a lot riding on this ‘flagship’ smartphone, after all this is the first time that the company is entering the Rs 20,000-plus category in India.

From today we will chronicle how it is living with the phone for a week, and will post regular updates here. Read on to know what we think about the phone.

Xiaomi Mi 5 has a 5.15-inch display with full HD resolution.

Day 5: An overall strong attempt

As some of you may have read earlier, our Mi 5 unit just kept heating up, especially during camera usage, and I got a new one from Xiaomi on Thursday. Where the overall performance is concerned, the Mi 5 gave no me trouble, except for the over-heating.

The battery test gave the new Mi 5 a life of around 10 hours, but the standby time on this device is pretty impressive. I didn’t charge it overnight, and left it on with 20 per cent battery, and I woke to up to find that the Mi 5 had not died. I didn’t charge it all morning either, and the phone’s battery levels did not dip at all. I’d say the Mi 5 should last a user their work day (10-12 hours for medium to heavy usage). I’d highly recommending carrying that Type-C USB charger around, should you need to re-charge at some point.

Sample shots from the new Xiaomi Mi 5

Sample shots from the new Xiaomi Mi 5

Sample shots from the new Xiaomi Mi 5

So is the heating issue entirely gone? Sadly I can’t say that, the device does hit 40 celsius; it happened when I was downloading a bunch of apps on the phone, but hey I can use the camera without worrying. Surprisingly it stays super-cool when I leave it on charge, and yes this ones take a long time to do so. Xiaomi is shipping this in India with Quick-charge 2.0 support as opposed to 3.0.

In terms of benchmark rankings, the Mi 5 appears to have taken the top spot, and is pretty much a perfect device. Gaming, general browsing, binge-video watching; the phone can handle it all. The only word of caution is that MIUI 7 version on Android 6 is still in beta mode, which means that the software is not all perfect.

With the camera on this unit, focussing is easier, even if it’s not the fastest. The Mi 5’s camera performs reasonably well under decent lighting conditions, and is suited for most people’s smartphone photography needs. However the colour accuracy is not entirely to my liking, and no the Mi 5 will not give you pictures like the S7 edge or the Nexus 6P. But if you are looking for a smartphone camera that will let you shoot good pictures, even inside a room where lightning might not be the best, the Mi 5 is more than capable.

In conclusion I’d say the Mi 5 is a very strong attempt from Xiaomi to create a premium looking device but at half-the-price. And no doubt Xiaomi has a lot at stake with this phone; in India this is their first device that costs Rs 24,999. In terms of overall performance, Mi 5 gives what you’d expect in a top-end phone; a good display, stunning design, and capability to handle most of a user’s daily needs. The camera I feel is still far from perfect, and yes the heating problem hasn’t entirely gone away, but hopefully Xiaomi will have some software fixes for these available soon.

Day 4: We’re pausing the blog

Our particular unit is giving a lot of heating problems.

One of the major concerns that I’ve faced with this phone is that it heats up significantly when I use the camera. About 10-15 minutes of usage is enough to get the heat going. I’ve already seen the temperature cross 42 degrees Celsius on this phone according to the CPU temperature app, and that’s really high.

The anomaly takes place only when I’m using the camera app, not even recording a 4K video. Surprisingly, the phone remains cool while charging, and there has been no other instance when I found the phone to be unbearably hot. The over-heating also means that I don’t have an exact estimate for how long the battery will last.

Given what we’ve read so far about the Snapdragon 820 chipset, we’ve not seen thermal issues, at least of this magnitude being mentioned. Xiaomi has offered to replace our review unit, and we’ll have to pause this blog till we get the new unit.

Based on the over-heating in the camera, we’ve believe the unit we’ve got could be defective, so we’ll have to wait for a replacement to confirm our thoughts on battery, and overall conclusion for the camera.

Day 3: Camera, and return of the heat wave

Xiaomi Mi 5 comes with a 16 megapixel camera with 4-axis OI to ensure better stability for your videos. The camera can also record 4K videos as well.

Like I said earlier, if you’re planning to take this one out at dinner and click a few snaps, it will do the job fairly well. No, this can’t beat the premium smartphone cameras yet.

Taken from a moving car.

There is a tendency to over-saturate colours like pink.

The focus is not the fastest and there were times when I didn’t like the final result, even though when I was framing the shot, the object appeared to be in perfect focus. Some shots I took from a moving car were pretty decent (didn’t bother to roll down the windows). In outdoor lighting, the results are impressive. But there is also a tendency to over-saturate colours. For instance, pale pink flowers had turned a deep pink in the photos.

Sample shot from Xiaomi Mi 5.

Sample shot from Xiaomi Mi 5

On the video front, the OIS helps, but don’t expect it to eliminate any sudden jerky movements. If your hand is shaking while taking a video (as mine was) at, the camera does reduce that to some extent in the final video.

My other big problem with the camera: Using it for 5 minutes is enough to turn the Mi 5 into a hot piece of metal and when I say hot, I mean hot. I’m not sure why this issue keeps happening with the device I have and I’m hoping, Xiaomi has a software update to fix this. Note that MIUI 7 on Android 6 is still on the beta build. And yes the camera app crashed twice for me, for which I sent a bug report.

The camera app crashed twice for me, for which I sent a bug report.

Overall for the camera, I’d say that it does a good job when you are taking pictures inside a room, which let’s face it will be a common use for most people. The selfie camera is also pretty good and the results can be shared on social media. I don’t like the way it makes my skin appear perfect, but hey a lot of people want that, so Xiaomi’s Beautify mode will probably appeal to some. Although I feel it should make up its mind whether I’m a 21 year old female or a 35 year old male. Like seriously.

One of the better shots I managed to capture with the Xiaomi Mi 5.

Day 2: General performance, UI  

The Mi 5 comes with a 5.15-inch display with full HD resolution and like other Xiaomi phones this also comes with their Sunlight display technology. Sure this is not a bezel-less display, but it is quite vivid and crisp colours. The blacks are really deep, and the viewing angles quite good. I don’t feel the need to keep the brightness at maximum in this display, and I actually prefer the smaller screen size.

Xiaomi Mi 5’s Antutu BenchMark test result.

The device is easy to hold when one is trying to watch a movie and given that my Netflix binge sessions have now moved on to smartphones, I’d say the Mi 5’s light-weight and size is a big plus point.

In terms of general performance, this one clocked in the top levels with a score of 1,10,645 on Antutu, putting the Mi 5 in the big league. For us, the S7 edge had previously scored closed to 1,30,000 and remember that phone costs Rs 56,900.

Benchmarks aside the phone has not given me any reason to complaint for now. I’ve made this my primary device, and be it gaming, multi-tasking, or just browsing Facebook endlessly, the Mi 5 can handle it all. The fingerprint scanner is working without any issues either and unlocks the phone quickly.

Xiaomi MIUI 7 on Android 6 lacks some of the features we’ve seen in the new OS. For instance, permissions remains a complicated feature in MIUI.

All of this is fine, except that the heating issue does flare up, especially when you are gaming for a long time. I felt the phone starting to heat-up around the top, close to where the chipset is located as I played Asphalt 8 on this phone, and that’s not a pleasant experience. Xiaomi needs to find a fix for this.

I’ve always liked the MIUI thanks to the number of useful features that Xiaomi keeps adding to it. But with the MIUI 7 on Android 6 I realised that a few features of Marshmallow are missing. For starters, No ‘Google Now on Top,’ and that’s disappointing.

With Android 6, a user can also restrict permissions for an app, and just like iOS, the system will flash an alert when an app, say Facebook Messenger wants to access the camera.

In the MIUI, the permissions are all granted in one go, and there are no pop-ups asking a user if they want to give access to this app or that app. To manage permissions one needs to go the Security app in MIUI, and I feel Xiaomi can just add this to the regular settings. As a user, this hunt for app permissions can be frustrating and figuring out which app has access to, what is a tedious exercise. I feel a more seamless solution to the whole permissions scenario would work better for most users.

Tomorrow: Camera samples coming up.

Day 1: A hot and cold beauty

A day after the launch, Hugo Barra held a special tear-down of the Xiaomi Mi 5 with select members of the Indian media. We got to see the smartphone inside out; the processor, the antennas, even parts of the display peeled off. It makes for an interesting visual to see a flagship like that, and Xiaomi is known for flooding the Indian fans with a host of technical details about its phone. The Redmi Note 3 was also subjected to a full tear-down.

Regular users are more bothered about how a smartphone performs on the outside and how it feels and looks. When I took the Mi 5 out of the box, my first impression was: my goodness this phone is incredibly light, and that’s good when you consider that this has a 3000 mAh battery. The metal-frame and the curved edges, plus the 3D glass back cover make the Mi 5 look beautiful too.

You can see that the company has put in a lot of effort designing this phone. Xiaomi Mi 5 comes with a 5.1-inch display, a ceramic home button with the fingerprint scanner inside it. The camera unit doesn’t jut out at all on the back like it does with my iPhone 6s. For now, I can’t get over how thin, and light this phone is.

However, I did face one big issue when I switched on the Mi 5. The phone became really hot, on the display and along the sides. It was as if the phone was on fire and given the lovely weather we are having in Delhi these days, I was afraid to hold it for too long. When I restarted the phone, it appeared to cool down. I also noticed that some MIUI update had appeared. Post that update, the phone has not heated up. But am yet to put this one through its paces, so hopefully the issue won’t re-appear.

Xiaomi has indicated that this MIUI 7 on Android 6 build is still in beta phase, so we’re expecting more updates during our review period.

Xiaomi Mi 5 has a 16 megapixel rear camera with 4-axis OIS.

However the heating issue re-appeared when I set it down for charging, while I took a nap. After it had reached 70 per cent charge I just unplugged the phone because it was once again super-hot, especially on the sides.

With the Mi 5, Xiaomi is also talking about the innovation it has done on the camera front, giving its 16 megapixel rear camera a 4-axis OIS and also the superior low-light performance. The low-light performance is actually quite good, considering the price and I did get some nice shots from this one while I was out for dinner with a friend. Sure the focus takes some time, and the selfie camera thinks I am 21 years old, but so far it does the job.

Sample shot from the Xiaomi Mi 5. (Image resized for the web)

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