Mi 5: Xiaomi's new flagship phone to be launched in India on March 31; expected to be priced under Rs 25,000

New Delhi: At the Redmi Note 3 launch event in New Delhi earlier this month Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra announced that the company would launch the new Mi 5 phone in India in a month, and now we have a date.

The company, which has started sending out media invites for its Mi 5 India launch event in New Delhi, has revealed that it is bringing the phone to the country on March 31.

"We are glad to share that we will be announcing the Mi 5 in India on Thursday, 31st March 2016," says the media invite.

There is no information as to what all variants will be introduced in India and at what prices, but we expect to be priced in India under Rs 25,000. It cannot be said if the phone will go on sale from the same day or later. The company will announce availability details for the Indian market at the March 31 event.

Unveiled to the world late last month, the Mi 5 was announced in three variants. The Mi 5 (32 GB storage and 3 GB RAM) is priced at RMB 1999 (roughly translates to Rs 21,000), the 64 GB Mi 5 variant at RMB 2299 (approximately Rs 24,000) and the Mi 5 Pro (the top-of-the-line SKU with 128 GB storage and 4 GB RAM) at Rs 2699 (roughly translates to Rs 28,500).

Successor to the Mi 4, the design of the Xiaomi Mi 5 is inspired by the Mi Note. Featuring curved edges, the new Mi 5 sports a slim metal frame with a 3D ceramic body which is claimed to be durable, wear resistant, and feels like marble. As Barra explains, the 3D ceramic body is 75 per cent more expensive than 3D glass.

Touted to be "insanely fast", the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core chipset, which is the latest Snapdragon processor in the market and is claimed to offer 200 per cent improved performance with 50 per cent reduction in power consumption. The Pro variant of the phone includes 4 GB of RAM and has 128 GB of onboard flash storage.

The base version of the phone has a 1.8 GHz processor while the higher priced variants have 2.15 GHz processors.

The Mi 5 comes with a Sony IMX298 16 megapixel sensor with dual-tone LED flash, PDAF, OIS, and 4K video recording. It sports a 4 megapixel front camera with 2um pixel size. It has a 3000 mAh battery with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology.

Weighing 129 grams, the Mi 5 is about 14 g lighter than the iPhone 6s. It is 7.25 mm thick and features a 5.15-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels.

In a bid to offer more user security and ease of use, Xiaomi has also added a front fingerprint sensor to the Mi 5. The Mi 5 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Xiaomi's newest MIUI7 layer atop.

Other specifications include 4G LTE with VoLTE support and dual SIM support. The Mi 5 will be available in white, black, and gold colour options.