Xiaomi Mi 5s Review

Xiaomi has a momentum lately, especially after announcing the Redmi 4 and Mi Note 2 and even more after announcing the Mi 5sM and Mi MIX. It is the Mi 5s that is the subject of this review. In many aspects it seems to be very similar to the Xiaomi Mi 5, yet it is a different model. Being one of the current top models of Xiaomi and one of the few devices powered by a Snapdragon 821 chipset, it is only natural to put it to the test and see what it can offer.

Specifications

Xiaomi Mi 5s features a 5.15-inch IPS display with an FHD resolution (1080 x 1920) and a pixel density of 428 ppi. It is covered with a 2.5D curved glass, but has no specified protective glass. The static contrast ratio of the screen is 1500:1, while the peak brightness measures 600 cd/sq.m. The display covers 94.4% of the NTSC color space. The model has a high-end edition with 128GB of storage. The display of this variant also provides force-touch support, employing the Synaptics ClearForce technology. The model's performance relies on a 14nm, 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro chipset that combines a couple of 2.15GHz Kryo CPU cores and another pair of such, but clocked at 2GHz. It also includes a 653MHz Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU. The device arrives either with 3GB or 4GB of dual-channel, LPDDR4 RAM from Hynix, clocked at 1866MHz. In terms of internal memory, there are two variants as well - 64GB and 128GB of UFS 2.0 storage. There are three combinations of RAM and storage: 4/32GB, 3/64GB, and 4/128GB. Besides a plethora of on-board sensors, the smartphone is equipped with an "ultrasonic" fingerprint sensor, embedded in the home button and made by Synaptics, too. The device also sports advanced connectivity options, including fully featured NFC with Android Beam, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and 802.11n 5GHz with MU-MIMO, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Display, Bluetooth 4.2, USB Type-C 2.0 with OTG support, DLNA. It also works in many networks bands, including 2G GSM, 2.5G CDMA, 3G WCDMA and TD-SCDMA, 4G LTE Cat. 12 with VoLTE. Mi 5s supports GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, and BeiDou as well. The camera department offers advanced hardware and software. The primary shooter is equipped with a 12-megapixel Sony IMX378 Exmor R CMOS sensor and a 6-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture. They are combined with phase-detection AF, dual-tone LED flash and Qualcomm's second-generation ISP dark light enhancement technology. For the front camera Xiaomi has opted for the 4-megapixel OmniVision OV4688 CMOS BSI sensor coupled with an 80° wide-angle lens with an f/2.0 aperture. The device also features an NXP 66T19 audio chip and an NXP TFA9891 amplifier, which should improve the audio experience. Finally, there's a 3200 mAh Li-Pol battery on board with a 9V/2A fast charger, using Quick Charge 3.0. For complete details, here is the full list of Xiaomi Mi 5s specifications.

What's in the box

Xiaomi Mi 5s arrives in a pristine white rectangular box with a MI logo debossed on its lid and a sticker with some basic specifications and certifications of the model on the bottom. Inside, the smartphone is placed in the top level compartment. It arrived perfectly packaged, even the rear camera had a protective foil against scratches. Below the device are placed a warranty card, a basic user manual and a separate small box with the charger, USB to USB Type-C 2.0 cable and SIM-tray pin. The wall charger has two flat pins and no grounding area - just like all other Xiaomi models. This is the US NEMA-1 plug standard used widely in the US, Canada and some Latin American countries, so in case you live in another part of the world, you'll definitely need an adapter.

Design, build and controls

Xiaomi Mi 5s boasts an all-metal body with visible antenna bands - the upper one makes a loop, while the bottom one is a single line. For the body high-grade aluminum alloy is used with a premium matte finish on the back. The latter has ergonomic curves along its vertical edges, which seamlessly blend into the frame and chamfered front edges. The latter merges with the 2.5D curves of the top glass layer of the display. What really makes an impression from first sight is that the device is very compact - quite narrow, thin and light for its size class. With its width of 70.3 mm and height of 145.6 mm, the Mi 5s is one of the most compact smartphones among those with a display in the 5.2-inch class. It is very close to Elephone S3's measurements (the S3 is the most compact smartphone we have reviewed up to now) and those of Meizu Pro 6. In addition, its thickness is 8.25 mm, which is an average measurement for smartphones with such a display. When you add in the fact that the battery measures 3200 mAh, you see that this is an optimum depth as other devices with a thinner waistline sport smaller batteries. Moreover, the ergonomically designed back makes the device look thinner than it is, while providing you with a comfortable and steady grip of it. The weight of 145 grams is quite attractive, too. The model is available in gold with a white front, rose-gold with a white front, silver with a white front, and grey with a black front colors. We are reviewing a silver unit with a white front. The overall design is reminiscent of the one of Xiaomi Mi 5, but is not exactly the same. The most noteworthy difference is that the tip of the edges is very slightly curved and not sharp as in Mi 5. The overall impression is that of an excellently crafted smartphone that is subtly elegant without being fragile. The dual nano-SIM card is located on the left frame of the device. This model does not offer expansion of the internal memory, so there is no slot for a microSD card. On the right frame are positioned the volume and power buttons. Both have very finely chamfered edges, so they are gentle to the touch and pleasant to the eye. The buttons are solid and tactile, no issues there. On the top frame the 3.5 mm jack is positioned and, surprisingly, there is no IR blaster. On the bottom frame, there is a centrally positioned USB Type-C 2.0 port with symmetrical grille holes on both sides. The left one is for a microphone and the right one is for the speaker. On the front above the display you will see the LED notification light, proximity sensor, earpiece, and front camera. Below the display is the capacitive navigation bar. It includes a large, touch sensitive home button with an embedded ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. The menu and back buttons are simple backlit dots - the left and right one, respectively. The buttons' functions can be changed from the Additional settings, so you can adapt the smartphone to the way you find most comfortable to use it. On the rear things are quite simple either. In the top left corner the dual-tone LED flash is positioned and the camera module is to its right. In the center of the antenna band a hole for the microphone is made and the MI logo is imprinted at the lower end of the device.

Display

The display of Xiaomi Mi 5s has a 5.5-inch diagonal size and an IPS panel with an FHD resolution (1080 x 1920) and a pixel density of 428 ppi. According to AIDA64, this panel is an in-cell IPS one made by JDI, but this information should be taken with a pinch of salt as sometimes such data prove not to be reliable. The screen is covered with a 2.5D curved top glass layer and, typically for Xiaomi, there is no special protective glass for it. At least, none of the official sources mentions of a protection for the screen of any kind. If you wonder, Mi MIX does not have a protective glass, either. The static contrast ratio of Mi 5s is specified as being 1500:1, while the peak brightness is 600 cd/sq.m. Coverage of the NTSC color space is specified to be 94.4%. The 128GB version of the model has a pressure sensitive screen. When you press harder on an app's icon, you can directly call up the application's shortcut function - just like the screen of Meizu Pro 6, which employs the same Synaptics ClearForce technology for pressure-sensitive screens. Similar to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, this model has a very bright display, with the white luminance at 100% brightness being 660 cd/sq.m. It drops by an average of 50% for each 25% decrease in the brightness level and at 0% it even measures 7 cd/sq.m. The black luminance values are very good - better than those of the Mi 5 and the Redmi Note 4, which ultimately leads to a very high contrast ratio. Actually, it is much higher than the specified one and varies from 2500:1 to 2800:1. Again, very similar to the aforementioned models, the display of Mi 5s has very acceptable temperature of the white point, which gravitates around the 7500 K point.

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	660.142 cd/m2	0.260 cd/m2	2539	7897 K
75 %	333.253 cd/m2	0.129 cd/m2	2583	7596 K
50 %	175.696 cd/m2	0.066 cd/m2	2662	7422 K
25 %	70.835 cd/m2	0.026 cd/m2	2794	7294 K
0 %	7.077 cd/m2	0.000 cd/m2	-	7319 K

The display panel has a standard striped sub-pixel geometry. Its coverage of the NTSC color space is specified as being 94%, however the CIE diagram shows that the gamut is not that wide. Indeed, it is larger than the sRGB color space, but is not as wide as a 94.4% of the NTSC one. You can make the colors warmer or colder, tweak the contrast and activate the reading mode of the smartphone from the Display settings. Besides being very bright, the display has almost near-perfect viewing angles with excellent color preservation and only minor loss in brightness when looked from aside. All in all, this is a very good display for a smartphone.

OS, UI and software

Xiaomi Mi 5s has arrived with a web-shop MIUI ROM, so we installed the original MIUI 8. Its latest version for this model is the MIUI v.8.0.10.0/Stable. This is the Chinese version of Xiaomi's IU as there isn't an official international one yet. We have already discussed in detail the differences of the 8th version compared to the MIUI 7. Put simply, MIUI 8 preserves the deep customization, but improves it in order to provide a more unified Xiaomi eco-system, similar to LeEco's one. The lock screen lacks special features. You just swipe up to unlock and get a shortcut to the camera. However, if you find shortcuts on the lock screen to be convenient, you can add more from the settings. Then you land on the home screen that has four docked apps at its bottom - Dialer, Messenger, Browser and Camera. A tap on the menu button opens the Task manager. Swiping them up one by one removes each, but you can also tap the Clean All button. Swiping an app down opens two options - an app lock function, so it cannot be removed from this list, and a shortcut to more information about the app. There is also an option to change the appearance of the apps in this list. By default they appear as mini screens of the app, however, you can switch to view only app icons for a more compact appearance. The Volume shade is no longer circular, but a rectangular one with all three volume types together. By default, in MIUI 8 the Notifications and Quick Settings are merged into one shade, which also contains weather information and a shortcut to the Settings. The Quick Settings toggles appear in one horizontal row, so you have to swipe to the left and right in order to access them. There is an option to switch to the classic MIUI appearance that contains two separate shades for the Notifications and the Quick Settings. The latter appear on one screen, which is accessed by swiping left from the Notifications shade. Tapping and holding the menu button brings up the Widgets menu, but you can also zoom in on the home screen to open it. It contains a total of four options: moving apps and folders from one screen to another, an extensive list of widgets to place on one of your screens, including toggles, shortcuts to settings, and many other widgets, an option for changing the wallpaper, and a choice of effects for switching between screens. To the right of the clock widget there is an icon, which opens a list of clock styles so you can change it to a one that you like more. The Power off shade is a classic MIUI one and contains four options. When you select one, it appears on a second screen to require confirmation for the action. The Settings menu of MIUI 8 is topped by a search bar, from where you can look for options and functions inside the Settings. The first group of options is the Network one, which manages the SIM cards and mobile networks, wireless connections, etc. It is followed by the Personal group of options. From here you can manage the Display, Wallpaper, Themes, Sound and Vibration. The Display settings contain classic features like adaptive brightness and brightness level, but also a Reading mode and options for changing the color temperature and contrast. The Wallpaper and Themes settings duplicate the Theme app in its offline part. The Sound & vibration options contain a toggle for Silent Mode, three volume levels, direct access to the ringtones and notifications sounds, vibrations and system sounds, as well as the advanced options for headphones and audio. The latter can be accessed from the Music app and from the Additional settings, which are about to be discussed below. The System & Device group of options comes third. It starts off with the Lock screen & password settings, which, besides all else contains the fingerprint options. Once you set up a fingerprint ID you can assign it to unlocking the device, to activating the child mode and other functions of the device. This group of settings also allows you to manage your smartphone's behaviour with various toggles for the Smart Cover, waking the screen and quick camera start. The Notifications and status bar is the second sub-group under System & Device. From here you can change the way the Notifications and Quick Settings shades appear, manage the app notifications and the toggle positions, as well as change the appearance of the status bar. MIUI 8 offers a very interesting feature called Second Space and it is the third sub-group. It activates a second virtual device within the smartphone, which contains everything a normal phone contains along with three additional icons for managing the second space, for moving data (importing/exporting data), and for switching between spaces. The Do Not Disturb settings then follow along with the Battery and Storage ones. The latest version of MIUI 8 does not contain a Lite Mode. The final sub-group is called Additional Settings and is very detailed. From here you can adjust the Date & time, Language & input, activate/deactivate the Child Mode and select for which apps it should be applied, and manage your Privacy settings. This sub-group also contains options for switching on/off and managing the Quick Ball, which is an alternative to the traditional navigation bar, managing the LED Notification Light and the Buttons from the navigation bar. The Additional Settings provide a shortcut to the Headphones & audio effects, too, and also includes options for switching to One-Hand mode, which is actually not necessary as the Mi 5s is quite compact and very comfortable to hold with one hand. The Accessibility and Backup & reset options are also under this sub-group along with the Mi Mover. The latter is MIUI's service for transferring your data from one Xiaomi smartphone to another. The fourth main group of options is the Accounts one. It allows you to manage your MI account, if you have one as it is not necessary in order to use your smartphone. The MI account is needed only to access several online MI services. This section also includes management tools for any other account you might have as well as tools for synchronizing the data between them. The last group is the App Settings one. It manages all apps on the device (system and installed ones), activates/deactivates the dual app function for using one and the same app separately, manages app permissions and locking. The final menu is About phone, which also includes the System updates feature that can be accessed from the Updater app as well. In MIUI 8, though based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the apps appear on successive screens. Uninstalling an app happens by holding on its icon and moving it to the Recycle bin icon that appears. This action is always followed by a dialogue that requires uninstall confirmation, so you can't remove an app by mistake. Actually, there is no excessive bloatware. The apps actually do not take a whole screen. However, there is a Tools folder that contains additional apps and another one with two MI apps. You get the main apps such as a Dialer (Phone), which has three tabs - the dial pad, contacts and Yellow Pages. However, in our case the Yellow Pages tab leads to mobile data management, which is probably a minor software error and should be fixed with a next update. There is a separate Contacts icon as well, and a simple Messenger app as well. The default Browser provides you with a choice between three default search engines, a built-in ad blocker, and a night reading mode, which makes the background black and the font - white. There's a Note app as well, which is entirely redesigned in MIUI 8 and is very easy to work with. The QR Scanner service is very quick and provides additional functions, such as exporting data to a business card or document, for example. The Calculator offers tons of features and goes beyond classic arithmetic, by adding scientific calculation options and a plethora of metric conversions - volume, mass, length, area as well as currency rates and mortgage calculations. The Clock app has the typical MIUI four tabs for alarm, clock, stopwatch and timer functions with their corresponding settings. There's a simple Calendar app along with the traditional MIUI Sound Recorder, Compass and Level services. The Explorer is the file manages in MIUI and includes three tabs. The Categories one is the home screen for this app and provides access to all types of files grouped in corresponding folders. There's a Recents tab listing the last and most used files as well as a Storage one as well that shows detailed information about the type of files and their volume. As expected, there's a Security app on board, which serves as a system optimizer. It includes a total of six services, the first one being the Cleaner. It analyzes the system and suggests shutting off unnecessary processes and further optimization functions. The Data usage service is for monitoring and managing the way your device uses mobile data with options to top up Xiaomi mobile data services. The third service is the Blocklist, which contains the calls and messages from contacts you want to block. The Virus scan function is self-explanatory. The Permissions feature manages your app permissions and app locks, very much like the App Settings features. The sixth service is for Battery management, but this feature will be discussed in the Battery section of this review. The Updater app does one thing - checks and installs updates (if any). The weather app is quite pretty and provides detailed weather information and prognosis. There are also many MI apps, which create a MI media eco-system. They include a Video player, Music player, Games, Themes, Mi Live, Mi Wallet, App Store, Mi Market. The Themes app is actually very rich in content and features. Once you open it, you land on the main page, from where you can navigate to different categories with themes - the newest, the hottest, nature-related, pet-related, and so on. You also get a shortcut to the themes available offline on your device, including those you've downloaded from the app. It also contains several other tabs such as the Wallpapers, Ringtones and Font ones. The logic behind their content is the same as with the Themes - there's plenty of online content, access to the offline one and tools for its management. In addition, the Themes app provides additional tools for UI customization. You can change the appearance of the Lock style, Status bar, Icons, Messenger, Dial pad and Favorites tray. There's also a separate screen, which is a one-point manager for all content under this app. In MIUI 8 a Virtual SIM app is included. It allows you to use Xiaomi mobile services without swapping SIM cards. The rest of the pre-installed apps include Mi Account, Email, Downloads, Voice Assistant (Chinese), Feedback, and Video Call. There's a MI Remote app too, but without an IR blaster it works only with Android-based devices that are connected in one and the same Wi-Fi network with your smartphone.

Networks, calls and connectivity

Xiaomi Mi 5s is equipped with a dual-SIM card tray for two nano-SIM cards. They work on a dual SIM standby mode and any slot can be set to be the main card one. The model supports Full Netcom 3.0 networks bands, which in more specific language means the following bands: 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 2.5G CDMA 800 MHz, 3G TD-SCDMA (1900 and 2000 MHz) and 3G WCDMA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz), 4G FDD-LTE (850, 900, 1800, 2100, 2600 MHz) and 4G TDD-LTE (1900, 2300, 2500, 2600 MHz). The advanced chipset includes an X12 LTE modem, which provides LTE Cat. 12 download speeds of up to 600 Mbps, and LTE Cat. 13 uplink speeds of up to 150 Mbps. Our review unit provides excellent reception and call quality. It is the same with its wireless connectivity options, which are many. The smartphone supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and 802.11n 5GHz with MU-MIMO, which ultimately means faster Wi-Fi connections. The rest of the wireless connectivity options of the model include Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Display, and Bluetooth 4.2. The device is equipped with a USB Type-C 2.0 port with OTG support. It also works with all major satellite navigation systems - GPS/A-GPS, Glonass, and BeiDou. Our review unit managed to detect many satellites for each of the three in a quick manner and with very good accuracy. Mi 5s supports fully featured NFC with Android Beam. This means that the smartphone can be used for payments and for travelling in the public transport.

Performance

The hardware of Xiaomi Mi 5s is based on the current top Qualcomm chipset - the 64-bit Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro. It is built after the 14nm process and offers up to 10% increased performance compared to the Snapdragon 820 SoC. The CPU architecture is the same as the one of SD820 - with four custom Kryo cores, however the pairs are clocked at a higher rate. More specifically, the chipset includes two Kryo CPU cores clocked at 2.15GHz and two Kryo CPU cores clocked at 2GHz. They are coupled with an Adreno 530 GPU clocked at 653MHz that provides 5% higher performance compared to the same GPU in the SD820. The new Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP is also on board and offers significant improvement in performance and battery life. The advanced system-on-chip also supports mobile virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays. This chipset powers a limited number of smartphones so far - the Mi MIX, Mi Note 2, Smartisan M1/M1L, OnePlus 3T, Google Pixel/XL, LeEco Le Pro 3, and Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe. Our review unit scored 153223 points in AnTuTu, which is very close to the results of Mi 5s Plus and LeEco Le Pro 3. The Basemark tests also show impressive results - 43584 points in Basemark X and 2576 in Basemark OS II. The Geekbench scores are comparable to those of other smartphones with the same chipset as well. The picture is the same with all 3DMark and PCMark tests. The performance of Xiaomi Mi 5s according to those benchmarks is as high as the one of other smartphones with the same SoC and in several occasions, the results are even higher. The model has three variants in terms of RAM/storage combinations, namely a 4/32, 3/64GB and 4/128GB. In all cases the RAM is double-channel, LPDDR4 clocked at 1866MHz and the internal memory is the UFS 2.0 type one, which is in general faster than any eMMC memory. We are reviewing a unit with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory. This amount of RAM is more than enough for the smartphone to operate smoothly even with many active apps to switch between. Of 64GB on board, 56GB are available to the user. The reading and writing speeds are almost twice as fast as the average speeds of other smartphones. Mi 5s is equipped with quite a number of sensors, including a proximity, light, magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, as well as a fingerprint sensor model Synaptics S3331. It is embedded in the home button and can be used for unlocking the device, switching on the child mode, etc. It works even if it is covered with dust, sweat and smudges, because it placed under the 2.5D glass panel. When the finger touches the recognition area, 10000 micro-seismic sensors for ultrasonic detection provide accurate scanning of the fingerprint. Unlocking is ultrasonic, indeed, and setting up a fingerprint ID is very easy.

Cameras

Тhe camera app has undergone some slight changes with the latest update to MIUI v.8.0.10.0|Stable. The home screen of the app remains the same with shortcuts to the HDR and flash options in the right and left upper corners, the circular shutter button in the center at the lower end of the screen. To its left is the shortcut to the filter and to its right is the camera switch shortcut. There's a shortcut to the 10 camera modes above the shutter button. When one of them is activated, its options appear above the shutter bottom along with a Turn off button. There are 10 modes to choose from, including panorama, beautify, HHT, timer, audio, straighten, tilt-shift, and manual mode. The new thing here is the GroupShot mode. The manual one provides options for manual adjustment of the focus, exposure time, white balance and ISO. The list of modes also includes a shortcut to the camera settings. Actually the modes and settings are different for the front and rear camera and differ based on whether the camera is set to take photos or videos. For the rear camera there are options for the QR scanner, low light enhancement, flash settings, saturation, contrast, sharpness. The front camera has options for its "mirror" function, when a face is detected. Of course, in all cases there are settings for the camera frame, picture and video quality, location information, face detection and anti-binding. The video options also have settings for the time-lapse interval and image stabilization. The camera app also provides various editing features once you take a photo. They include applying filters, adjusting the frame, adding a sticker, and doodling. Besides editing a photo, you can delete it or send it via one of the available apps (chat and social media ones). The More... icon opens a list with options for setting a photo as a wallpaper or as a contact photo, add it to an album or start a slideshow, check the details of the photo properties (exposure, ISO, etc.).

Primary camera

The main camera of Xiaomi Mi 5s is equipped with a 12MP Sony IMX378 Exmor R CMOS sensor. It has a focal length of 4.73 mm and 1/2.3-inch size. The pixel size on its part is 1.55µm. The sensor is combined with an 80° wide-angle, 6-element lens with an f/2.0 aperture. Their work is aided by a dual-tone LED flash and phase-detection auto-focus with a closed-loop control of the ball-type focus motor. Qualcomm's second-generation ISP with dark light enhancement technology is on board as well. The resolution of the photos taken with this camera is 4000 x 3000 pixels. The shooter is also capable of making 4K videos (3840 x 2160) at 30 fps as well as 720p videos at 120 fps (slow-motion ones). More interestingly, the device is capable of making a 50-megapixel panorama (13760 x 3456 pixels) and supports a 32-second manual exposure. Other smartphones that employ the same sensor for their primary camera are the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL.

Secondary camera

For the front-facing camera of Mi 5s Xiaomi has opted for a 4-megapixel OmniVision OV4688 CMOS BSI sensor with a focal length of 4.6 mm and 2µm pixels. It is combined with an 80° wide-angle lens with an f/2.0 aperture. The photos are with a resolution of 2688 x 1512 pixels and the camera can shoot FHD videos at 30 fps. The same sensor is used in the front camera of Xiaomi Mi 5.

Audio

The MI Music Player follows MI's architecture for media apps and is an integral part of MI's media eco-system. When you start the app you land on a home screen that has shortcuts to all main functions, including the latest and hottest songs online. You get access to free and paid music online, but also to the music that you have stored on the device. You can even stream music, but for the more advanced options you'll need to have a MI account. The home screen for offline music includes a Favorites folder, Local songs and All songs folders, Followed artist folder, a list with suggestions you might like, playlists and the real player itself. The songs can be grouped according to their names, artists or albums. Once you open a music file you can swipe to the right and open the shade with the settings, or swipe to the left and open the shade with lyrics for the song you're currently playing. The Music app is the third place from which you can access the Headphones & audio effects settings. Once you switch them on (you must have headphones hooked to the smartphone), you can choose the type of headphones you're using, assign the buttons, tweak the equalizer and switch on/off the MI Sound Enhancer when using speakers. As usual, we perform our audio test by using the TASCAM US-2x2 audio interface and the RightMark Audio Analyzer software. The results refer to the audio system of the device and do not take into account the speaker. Xiaomi smartphones, even the basic ones we've tested, have shown very good to excellent results, even without special audio setup. The only exception from the rule was the Xiaomi Redmi Pro. Mi 5s is something in between. It is equipped with an NXP 66T19 audio chip and an NXP TFA9891 amplifier, but did not score as high as expected. Our review unit excelled only in frequency response, but at the same time scored Average in THD + Noise. The rest of the parameters showed a Very good result, so is the overall score from the test. The speaker is better than average.

Test	Value	RMAA rating
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB	-0.00, -0.09	Excellent
Noise level, dB (A)	-94.3	Very good
Dynamic range, dB (A)	94.2	Very good
THD, %	0.0085	Very good
THD + Noise, dB (A)	-78.5	Average
IMD + Noise, %	0.0088	Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB	-82.5	Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %	0.016	Very good
General performance		Very good

Battery

The Security app that arrives pre-loaded with MIUI 8 includes six functions for optimizing the device's performance. One of them is the Power Efficiency. It includes a Battery Saver toggle with options for scheduling the switch between modes. There's also a Battery Use monitor showing which apps and hardware parts consume more power over time. There's a separate monitor for the battery's capacity and which services drain it the fastest. The Settings icon of the Power app leads to additional options such as the the Schedule power on & off, Battery indicator type, Battery drain and Heating notifications, turn off mobile data and clear cache when the device is locked functions. The app can also analyze battery usage and suggest optimizations. There is a Battery & performance section in the Settings menu as well. It contains a shortcut to the Power Efficiency app and provides additional services such as Battery Usage, Managing Battery Usage and System animations. Gone are the pre-defined battery saving profiles. Xiaomi Mi 5s features a 3200 mAh, Li-Pol, non-removable battery (model BM360). It is combined with a 9V/2A fast charger supporting Quick Charge 3.0. The graph below demonstrates the time the battery needed to charge from 0% to 100% (yellow line) and its temperature during the charging process (red line). For the first 10-11 minutes charging was slow and the battery gained only 2-3% of its capacity. After that the charging speed increased and after 32 minutes the battery reached 50% of its charge. Another 25 minutes later it reached 80%. At that point the speed slowed down and the final 20% to 100% needed 33-34 minutes. The total charging time was 1 hour and 45 minutes. At the same time the battery temperature shows a different curve. At the beginning the temperature was 30 °C. For the first 10-11 minutes it rose together with the charging speed and reached 41°C. It continued to raise the temperature gradually and reached its top level of 44°C when the battery reached 50% of its charge. This temperature was maintained till the battery reached 70% of its capacity and then started to lower down. At the end it was 31°C. The PCMark Work 2.0 battery life test showed an excellent result of 7 hours and 48 minutes. Actually, such a result is more typical for batteries with a 4000 mAh capacity and this one's is 3200 mAh. The test has been performed in accordance with Futuremark's recommendation of calibrating the display's brightness to 200 cd/sq.m.

Final thoughts

The most noteworthy feature of Xiaomi Mi 5s is its high-end processor, which proves that it has top processing power and everyone can honestly call the smartphone a "performance beast". The second thing that's good about this model is its display. It is very bright and with an excellent contrast, however, the lack of a protective glass for the screen is a minus, especially in the context that this device is of the pricier Mi series. A third main selling point is its advanced camera, which is capable of making quality photos, indeed. The selfie shooter is not bad either. The battery showed some real stamina as well. All in all, Xiaomi Mi 5s is a fine smartphone and a serious competitor of other advanced mobile devices in the $300-400 price class.