Xiaomi Mi5 is a steal at that price

We’ve been here before. A beautiful smartphone with amazing specs at a price so low it’s hard to believe. The only apparent catch? It’s made in China and no one you know has ever heard of it.

Two years ago that phone would have been a Huawei. Today, Huawei is one of the most recognisable tech brands in South Africa. Its P8 and P8 Lite models alone have racked up sales of over 300 000, a big contributor to the brand’s 34 percent share of the high-end smartphone market. The company expects its successor, the P9, to sell even better.

With Huawei now swimming in the mainstream with big fish like Samsung, the “unknown Chinese brand” slot is occupied by Xiaomi.

I put “unknown” in quotes, because in the Far East, Xiaomi is anything but. It’s been dubbed the Apple of China due to its explosive growth over the past five years, so it’s apt that the same people who brought Apple products to Africa - Mobile in Africa Group (MIA), an offshoot of the Core Group - are bringing Xiaomi to the continent.

The brand may already be on some tech watchers’ radar, thanks to the arrival of the Mi4, an impressively specced sub R4 000 smartphone and the Redmi Note 2, not quite as powerful but a steal at under R3 000. But outside the geek crowd, Xiaomi is pretty much unknown.

I’m betting that’s going to change over the coming year and if it does, Xiaomi’s latest arrival, the Mi5, will have a lot to do with it.

I first encountered the phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February and was smitten by this stunning assemblage of aluminium and glass. It had the build quality and looks to rival Apple’s 6S and Samsung’s S7 Edge.

And it’s not just in the eye candy department that the Mi5 is taking on the heavyweights. It has plenty of brains courtesy of a Snapdragon 820 processor, up to 4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of internal storage.

“Mi like!” I tweeted at the time. But would my initial enthusiasm stand up to the rigours of daily use? Would familiarity breed contempt or sighs of contentment? I recently got to find out when I spent a few weeks with the Mi5.

The verdict: plenty of contentment and a sigh of regret when the courier arrived to take it back.

My review unit was a pearl-white model and it looked just as gorgeous as I remembered it from Barcelona. Its curved glass back is startlingly reminiscent of Samsung’s S6 and S7 Edge phones, but without the curved glass on the front. It makes for an elegant device, one that also nestles beautifully in the hand.

Be warned, though, it’s pretty slick and if the surface you place it on is even slightly angled, you risk it sliding off with potentially catastrophic consequences. This happened twice to me and I was fortunate on both occasions to catch it before it hit the ground. I’d recommend you buy a cover when you get the phone.

The 5.15-inch high-definition screen was crisp and bright, even outdoors. It’s not quite up to the perfection of Samsung’s Super Amoled displays, with even last year’s S6 Edge beating the Mi5 in pixel count. But I doubt you’ll notice the difference unless you put the two phones side-by-side.

When it comes to raw power, the Mi5 is up there with the flagships. It handled processor-hungry tasks - including several mobile games that are virtually unplayable on lesser devices - with nary a stutter.

Battery life was good, with the 3 000mAh cell generally seeing me through a full work day of moderate use and well into the evening. Sustained heavy use will risk draining it before the day is out, so you’ll need to take the charger with you.

It uses one of the new USB 3.1 Type C chargers which is both good and bad news. Good because it fits into the matching slot on the phone either way you insert it - so no more fumbling in the dark to plug it in. Bad because you won’t be able to borrow a mate’s charger to juice up your phone in an emergency unless he or she was one of the few people with these new-fangled connectors.

This should become less of an issue as more manufacturers bring Type C devices to the market. LG has already taken the leap with its G5 and Samsung is widely rumoured to be going this route with its soon-to-be-announced Note 7. So kudos to Xiaomi for being ahead of the curve.

The 16MP rear camera has an F/2.0 aperture, which made for generally excellent pictures both in bright daylight and after dark. I was less impressed with the front-facing 4MP camera, particularly in low-light conditions, but not being a serial selfie snapper, this wasn’t really an issue.

Video quality was acceptable if not exceptional. I did enjoy playing around with the slow-motion video recording feature. You can also record video in 4K.

In summary the Mi5 is an attractive, powerful device that competes well with the best of today’s high-end smartphones. But I haven’t mentioned its killer feature yet: Its price. At R7 999 it’s a full R5 000 cheaper than similarly specced rivals. This is incredible value.

Which leaves just one more question: How the heck do you pronouce Xiaomi?

Most people I encounter know by now that Huawei is pronouned “wha-way”. Xiaomi, however, still seems to be a tongue twister for most non Chinese speakers. According to Hugo Barra, the ex-Google exec who joined Xiaomi in 2013, the best way to pronounce it is to “think of show me’ and then pronounce the first word as if it were shower’.”

However you pronounce it, Xiaomi’s Mi5 is great news for anyone looking for a premium smartphone for well under R10 000.

Mi still like! A lot.

– Follow Alan Cooper on Twitter @alanqcooper.