The move is said to transform the Chinese company's brand image which has seen since the start been considered an affordable brand. The high pricing of the Xiaomi Mi 5 can also be seen as an attempt to compete against other Chinese counterparts such as OnePlus, Huawei, and Meizu among others.
Another detail about the Xiaomi's yet-to-be-announced Mi 5 says that the phone may not launch until April 2016. A report of China cites use of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor. This corroborates to an earlier report that said Samsung had an agreement with Qualcomm that gave the brand an exclusive access to the chipset until April 2016. This would mean that no handset brand can launch its high-end device with the Snapdragon 820 before Samsung's next flagship, which is likely to feature the chipset.
We'd like to remind readers however, all these leaks should be taken with a pinch of salt as Xiaomi has not mentioned anything about the upcoming device beyond teasing how good it will be, and the legitimacy of the leaks remains questionable.
A recent leaked listing of the Xaomi Mi 5 purportedly claimed $599 (roughly Rs. 40,000) to be the retail price of the handset.
Some reports have claimed that Xiaomi may launch two versions of the Mi 5 - one priced at CNY 1,999 (approximately Rs. 20,800) and another at CNY 2,499 (approximately Rs. 26,000). The Chinese company is also said to use a pressure-sensitive touchscreen, which will be a technology similar to Apple's 3D Touch-like pressure sensitive technology. The Chinese company may not have revealed launch date of the Mi 5 flagship smartphone, but the company has been buzzing social media with claims that the handset will be "worth the wait" and is "very, very good".
For details of the latest launches and news from Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, OnePlus, Oppo and other companies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, visit our MWC 2025 hub.