Xiaomi yesterday released two new flagship smartphones, Xiaomi MI5S and Xiaomi MI5s Plus both with metal body. In press conference, Lei Jun has introduced Xiaomi MI5S ultrasonic fingerprint scanner and excellent camera quality. So how about Xiaomi MI5S and Xiaomi MI5S Plus? Which one should you buy?
Design
Xiaomi MI5S is similar to Xiaomi mi5 in its design, but in details, they have big difference. mi5s has 145.6mm*70.3mm*8.25mm dimensions that is larger than Xiaomi MI5, and Xiaomi mi5s has 145g weight which is a little heavier than Xiaomi MI5. The other MI5s Plus has 5.7inch design.
On the front design, Xiaomi MI5S uses 2.5D glass screen with metal edge looking more natural, whether the touching feel or look it shows, Xiaomi MI5S has been both improved. Xiaomi MI5S Plus also uses 2.5D glass, but this smartphone doesn’t use ultra narrow bezel design, so the black edge controls better than Xiaomi MI5S.
Both ditched MI Logo on the front design which looks more simple.
Xiaomi MI5S uses front fingerprint scanner like Xiaomi MI5, but MI5S has the advantage to first adopt Under Glass Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, and dig a hole to let users find the ID place. Xiaomi MI5S Plus still uses three virtual buttons, and put the fingerprint ID on its back.
Xiaomi MI5S uses high gross drawing matte grinding process with all metal unibody. Its camera and flashlight are opposite to Xiaomi MI5, putting its LED flashlight in front of the camera. Besides, Xiaomi MI5S also designs the microphone on its back of antenna line, but Xiaomi mi5 puts it on the top middle frame.
Xiaomi MI5S Plus has similar back design to Redmi Pro that takes the three-step design, the overall design looks very natural and beautiful.
Besides, Xiaomi MI5S has cancelled the Infrared function, but Xiaomi MI5S Plus has retained this function.
Therefore, Xiaomi MI5S and Xiaomi MI5S Plus have their own advantages and disadvantages in design. The advantage is that they have simple front design that looks more beautiful.The disadvantage is that they use metal body instead of glass or ceramic body.
Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner
Xiaomi MI5S is the first one to use ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, Lei Jun claims they have spent a lot of efforts and time in this function, according to three years’ research, it has been finally used on Xiaomi MI5S. The largest advantage of MI5S in Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is that there is no pole to keep the body perfect, but Xiaomi MI5S has ditched a semi-round groove under the glass in order to recognize the fingerprint place better. But Xiaomi MI5 uses the long Home Button with fingerprint scanner, its fingerprint ID design is similar to Oneplus 3 that can’t be pressed.
Last year when Qualcomm announced Snapdragon 820 processor, they have also unveiled ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, there are many advantages between Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner and traditional capacitive touch screen fingerprint technology. The former one can penetrate glass, aluminum, stainless steel, sapphire, or the shell of plastic smartphone to scan and overcome sweat, grease, dirt that can’t unlock the phone from traditional fingerprint scanner. Although it has good technology, it is not so mature currently about ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. Before Xiaomi MI5S with non-pole Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, others takes this kind of fingerprint ID with back hole solution. So Xiaomi MI5S is the first one to use it without hole.
According to real test about unlocking, Xiaomi MI5 uses Sweden FPC fingerprint scanner, but Xiaomi MI5S with ultrasonic fingerprint scanner has nice accuracy in unlocking. It’s a little pity that the unlocking speed of mi5s is a bit slower than MI5. The biggest advantage of ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is to support wet hand unlocking without holes on the phone. So can Xiaomi MI5S support it? We have tested it for several times, it proves failure to unlock with wet hands.
Xiaomi MI5S Plus doesn’t support ultrasonic fingerprint scanner but FPC fingerprint scanner which has nice unlocking accuracy and fast speed. Therefore, Xiaomi needs to improve the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner in unlocking speed in the near future.
Camera
Xiaomi MI5S uses Sony IMX378 sensor, 12MP camea, 1/2.3 optical parts, 1.55μm unit pixel, which is the largest unit in popular smartphones which can improve the brightness better for shooting at night. Xiaomi MI5S Plus uses dual 13MP color and white rear camera. So let’s see the photo samples to check the quality.
According to Xiaomi MI5S and Xiaomi MI5S Plus samples, Xiaomi MI5S has higher brightness and full color, but Xiaomi MI5S plus looks more real and clear, it has higher contrast degree. In close distance and background blurring, Xiaomi MI5S Dual rear camera algorithm needs to be optimized. Compared with Xiaomi MI5S single camera, the improvement is not so obvious.
In the evening, according to above two sets of pictures, Xiaomi MI5S light has not been highly improved compared with MI5, Samsung S7 Edge has highest light, due to MI5S Plus with dual rear camera, the CMOS of single camera is smaller, it has no advantage in light.
In general, Xiaomi MI5S image conform to our standard, improved more than mi5. But it has some gap than Samsung S7 Edge. However, Xiaomi MI5s Plus has lower light at night and color saturation needs to be improved, the dual rear camera has not operated perfectly.
Performance
Xiaomi MI5S and Xiaomi MI5S Plus both uses Snapdragaon 821 processor, Xiaomi MI5S CPU frequency is up to 2.15Ghz, GPU up to 624MHz, but Xiaomi MI5S Plus up to 2.35GHz and 653MHz GPU. In theory, the hardware performance will be better than Xiaomi MI5. Check their Antutu test score.
According to antutu test, although Xiaomi MI5S or MI5S Plus has not got 164K antutu scores according to official claim, Xiaomi MI5S with 13.6W and Xiaomi MI5S Plus with 12.1W scores are better than MI5 powered by Snapdragon 820 CPU. As for the reason that they can’t reach 16W scores, according to CPU monitoring software feedback, Xiaomi MI5S and MI5S Plus has not reached the highest frequency in its CPU, namely, they don’t perform the all performance of Snapdragon 821 processor when testing the scores.
Let’s check their GeekBench scores.
We can see three smartphones don’t have much gap on Geekbench socres, Xiaomi mi5 single core score is lower than other two, Xiaomi MI5S Plus with highest frequency has got the first rank without doubt. But in multi-core score, Xiaomi MI5s is lower than MI5, which makes us amazed. We believe Xiaomi doesn’t make optimization for this kind of software.
We have test their temperature, due to ceramic body, Xiaomi MI5S has higher temperature than Xiaomi MI5S and Xiaomi MI5S Plus, so MI5S and MI5S Plus have better advantage in cooling.
In all, thanks to higher processor and internal storage, Xiaomi MI5S and MI5S Plus have better performance, metal body makes them have better cooling advantage. But there is no fundamental difference between Snapdragon 820 and Snapdragon 821 processor. So you can pay more attention to the internal storage when you choose.
Conclusion
Xiaomi MI5S has improved much than MI5, adding the new features like ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, metal body. But this kind of fingerprint scanner needs to develop more mature. But Xiaomi MI5S Plus belongs to new product line with higher performance, its dual rear camera algorithm needs to be improved in the near future. Therefore, if you prefer to taking photos, metal body, ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, 3D touch function, Xiaomi MI5S will be a good choice, if you are into large screen and dual rear camera, Xiaomi MI5s Plus is more suitable for you.
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