NO surprises here. The Xiaomi Mi 5X smartphone (click for complete specs) was unveiled today in China. While the 5X is positioned as a midrange option, it doesn’t appear to have stopped the company’s engineers from drawing up a premium-looking device with a big screen and the same dual-camera system found on the flagship Mi 6.

The Xiaomi Mi 5X touts a slim metal unibody featuring anti-fingerprint coating and rounded edges for a better feel and a discrete antenna design reminiscent of the Apple iPhone 7’s. It’s also relatively lightweight, weighing in at 165 grams. That makes the Mi 5X lighter than the smaller Mi 6 and the bigger iPhone 7 Plus.

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The fingerprint reader on the 5X is located on the back, where the pair of cameras and two-tone flash also reside. Speaking of which, the phone pairs a 12-megapixel, wide-angle camera with a telephoto camera of the same megapixel count to generate background blur and make your images look like samples coming from a DSLR cam.

The LCD screen measures 5.5 inches, with slim bezels on both sides. As for the internals, the 5X will ship with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Powering the assembly will be a 3,080mAh battery. MIUI 9, the latest iteration of Xiaomi’s custom Android user interface, on top of Android Nougat is expected to come standard.

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The handset also features a standalone audio chip, as well as a special audio-calibration algorithm that improves the sound quality of headphones and external speakers. All in all, these are good specifications for a midranger, and anyone looking for a non-flagship upgrade should be pretty happy with what’s onboard.  

The Xiaomi Mi 5X will retail at 1,499 yuan (around P11,200 or $220) in its native China. Global availability hasn’t been announced yet.

Xiaomi Mi 5X commercial starring actor, singer, and model Wu Yifan

In related matters, Xiaomi announced MIUI 9 at the press event in China. The upcoming software update promises faster boot and app-launch times, better multitasking, and a universal search engine on Mi phones, among other improvements.

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The Chinese beta for MIUI 9 will be available for download beginning August 11th. Xiaomi Mi 6, Mi 5X, and Redmi Note 4X (Qualcomm-based) owners will be the first to experience the update on their devices.

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