The Xiaomi Mi 5 is "worth waiting for" says CEO Lei Jun
Yesterday, Xiaomi unveiled the Redmi Note 3 and the Mi Pad 2 at a special event in China. The absence of the Xiaomi Mi 5 among the company's newly-unveiled products did not go unnoticed by the Chinese media. When questioned regarding the company's next flagship smartphone, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said that the Mi 5 "is worth the waiting", and that the phone is "very very good".
Unfortunately, Jun did not provide any other details about the upcoming Xiaomi flagship, although he did note that Xiaomi is speeding up its development cycle, meaning that we should expect less time between the company's product launches.
The first time we've heard that Xiaomi is working on a successor to the Mi 4 was back in late 2014 when the Xiaomi Mi 5 was rumored to be unveiled at CES 2015 in January. As months passed and Xiaomi never actually unveiled the handset, other sources claimed - back in the summer - that the Xiaomi Mi 5 was delayed. Allegedly, the company was having problems integrating the Snapdragon 810 in the Mi 5 without bypassing the chip's known overheating issues. As such, Xiaomi officials are said to have postponed the Xiaomi Mi 5 release date until Qualcomm is ready to ship the upcoming Snapdragon 820, an event slated for the first months of 2016.
If you're hoping to get your hands on the Xiaomi Mi 5 in the US, then we hate to break it to you, but an US variant of the phone is unlikely. The Xiaomi CEO said yesterday that China remains the company's primary focus, followed by secondary markets such as India, Indonesia, and Brazil. According to Lei Jun, "it will take some time" before the company expands to other regions such as Japan or the US, a claim that other Xiaomi officials have repeatedly made in the past year.
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