Xiaomi Mi 5c Review

Overview

Xiaomi Mi 5c was announced a month ago together with the first in-house developed Xiaomi chipset - the Surge S1, and is the first smartphone in the world based on this SoC. This fact alone is interesting enough to make a review of the device. In addition, its impressively compact metal body does happen to be a very attractive feature along with the affordable price of around USD 235-250 (at the moment of writing this review). So let's have a closer look at the model's specifications and features, and check out whether it offers additional benefits beyond the obvious ones. Of course, parallels between the classic Mi 5 and the Mi 5c are inevitable and where appropriate we will compare those two models in the review below.

Specifications

Xiaomi Mi 5c packs a 5.15-inch IPS display from JDI (Japan Display Inc.). The panel is with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, offers a peak brightness of 550 cd/m² and a static contrast ratio of 1500:1. The coverage of the NTSC colour space is said to be 94.4%. The display is covered with a 2.5D curved glass that is scratch resistant. The model's hardware is based on the 64-bit Xiaomi Surge S1 chipset built upon the 28 nm process. It includes four 2.2GHz Cortex-A53 cores and another quadruplet of those but clocked at 1.4GHz. Graphics are handled by a quad-core ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU. The smartphone is equipped with 3GB of LPDDR3, double-channel RAM clocked at 933MHz. The internal memory is of the eMMC 5.0 type and measures 64GB. It cannot be expanded. Besides all standard sensors on board, the device features a fingerprint sensor (Fingerprint Cards FPC1245) embedded in the home button. The latter functions both as a physical and capacitive button. The smartphone arrives with a dual-SIM tray for two nano-SIM cards. It supports the following network bands: 2G GSM (900, 1800, and 1900 MHz), 3G TD-SCDMA (1880-1920 and 2010-2025 MHz), and 4G LTE-TDD (1900, 2300, 2500, and 2600 MHz) bands. 4G speeds are Cat. 6 ones. The model also supports VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Display, and Bluetooth 4.1. An infrared and a USB Type-C 2.0 port with OTG are on board as well. The model works with GPS, GLONASS, and BeiDou. The rear camera features a 12-megapixel "Night Eye" ultra-sensitive camera with 1.25 μm pixel size, high CRI LED flash, PDAF, 6-element lens and an f/2.2 aperture. The front-facing snapper packs an 8-megapixel sensor. A 2860 mAh battery with a 9V/2A fast charger keeps the lights on. For complete details, here is the full list of Xiaomi Mi 5c specifications.

What's in the box

Just like the Redmi Note 4X, Xiaomi Mi 5c is placed inside a simple white box. On the lid, the MI logo is imprinted with a special effect on the surface and there's data about the model version. In our case it says 3GB/64GB. On the side of the lid, the full model name is written. On the bottom of the box, there's data about the main specifications and certifications of the smartphone. The accessories are pretty standard. Below the device, a user manual/warranty card, SIM tray pin, USB Type-C cable and a charging adapter are placed. The latter has two flat pins corresponding to the US standard electric socket. Therefore, if you live outside the US, Canada, and some Latin American countries, you will need a plug adapter.