The flagship smartphone Xiaomi Mi5, which was rumoured to debut in January 2016, has been delayed, says a report from the company's home market China.
Company CEO, Lei Jun on Weibo has issued a statement, which says that the company is in no hurry to launch Mi5 and is working to perfect the device by incorporating bug-free software, value-added features so that device owners will be able to enjoy rich user-experience.
The company is also focusing on the Xiaomi Mi5 production so that once the device gets unveiled, there will be no short supply of units in the market, reported IT Home.
Earlier this week, news broke that Samsung clinched a deal with Qualcomm to get exclusivity of Snapdragon 820 chipset till April.
But, before the above report made the headline, Xiaomi Mi5, which is also rumoured to house the same CPU was expected to debut in January as the first smartphone to feature the S820 chipset.
We are not sure whether the Samsung-Qualcomm deal is the real reason behind Xiaomi delaying the release of the Mi5.
That said, Xiaomi is under a lot of pressure. The company failed to meet the 80 million phone sales target this year due to intense competition from its Chinese peers Huawei, Meizu, Lenovo and South Korea-based Samsung.
Whatever the reason might be, with more time at hand, Xiaomi now can focus on conducting more tests on Mi5 so that there are no issues with Snapdragon 820, considering its predecessor S810's over-heating glitch, which created problems in Xperia Z4 (aka Z3+), and HTC One (M9).
The company should also look for other areas of improvement, and try to incorporate value-added features either in terms of hardware or by MIUI software.
Even Samsung faced similar dilemma in 2014. The company's flagship phone Galaxy S5 failed to impress buyers and it felt the effect later in the year. Samsung's 2014 Q3 earning saw a staggering 60% plus drop in the profit margins. The South Korean company then made radical changes in terms of design and features in Project Zero, codename of Galaxy S6. It did succeed in arresting the slide in revenue flow to a certain level.
It's high time Xiaomi implements similar tactics so that the Mi5 stands out among rivals and helps invigorate the company's sagging smartphone sales.
Stay tuned for more updates.
Expected features of Xiaomi Mi 5:
| Model | Xiaomi Mi 5 |
| Display | 5.2-inch QHD display with 2560x1440p |
| OS | Android 6.0 Marshmallow |
| Processor | Snapdragon 820 series quad-core processor |
| GPU | Adreno 530 |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Storage | 32GB/64GB |
| Camera |
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| Battery | 3030 mAh |
| Network | 4G-LTE |
| Add-ons | Advanced 3D finger-print sensor, 3D Touch display sensor, USB Type-C port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.1 |
