As people get their wallets ready to spend whatever they can on gifts and gadgets, Chinese OEMs are doing their best to ensure their next big thing comes out right in time this season.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 has already seen a couple of delays, but there might still be a silver lining for Xiaomi w.r.t the phone.
The Mi 5 will reportedly be the first Snapdragon 820 phone to launch in the world; now, a couple other phone makers have made the same claim (Letv being one), but word about the Mi 5 being the first comes not from Xiaomi, but a noted Chinese analyst.
Gizchina News of the week
Another leak that has to do with this very phone is an alleged leak that depicts thin bezels. Now, it isn’t really going to be a surprise to have a 2016 phone with slim bezels, but getting a glimpse of that in 2015 doesn’t hurt. So have at it below:
While there’s still no official confirmation on whether the Mi 5 will have the Snapdragon 820, there is some insight on what the phone will offer otherwise. This includes a smallish footprint (with a 5.2-inch display, most likely), 3/4GB RAM, laser auto focus rear camera (16-21 mega-pixel), and a battery of around 3500mAh in capacity and non-removable in nature.
It wouldn;t surprise me if they are the first to launch given their relationship with Qualcomm.
and yet despite this relationship they were still very late to ship their 810-based Mi Note Pro.
They launched the MI Note Pro the day after Qualcomm announced the SD810 (that was Jan or Feb of i remember correctly)
They started shipping the Note Pro about 3/4 months later (May-if i still remember correctly).
Meanwhile other brands like LG and HTC were shipping their SD810 phones.
Though the reason of that delay was due to the problems with the SD810.
In fact the Note Pro had been the first phone shipping with the newest revision (2.1) of the SD810.
Yes I can agree with most of what you said (although I really don’t care when a phone “launches” but more importantly when it actually starts to ship) my main point is Qualcomm is just an investor as any significance/benefit of any “relationship” has yet to be seen as Qualcomm hasn’t really given them any preferential treatment or exclusives (not to mention Xiaomi still uses a lot of competitors SoC’s in it’s phones).
It’s also interesting that Qualcomm couldn’t otherwise convince or sell Xiaomi on the idea to use the 810 (whatever version of it) in another phone other than the Note Pro.
What about the mi4i? It wasn’t the first Snapdragon 615 phone, either.
they basically used Xiaomi to drive the sales of that wrong SoC
Though I agree that when it started to shipping matters much more than when it announced, as long as it among the first adopters, being very first is not that important IMO.
Everything is based on timing, they didn’t have a phone ready during most of Qualcomm’s releases.