[MWC 2017] Whenever we hear about new Android smartphones that aren’t of Samsung or Huawei’s making, more often than not we’ll hear about how they are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon series of chipsets. However this year at MWC 2017, Xiaomi is doing things a little differently.
The company has officially announced their latest smartphone in the form of the Xiaomi Mi 5c which will be the first phone from the company to be powered by Xiaomi’s newly announced Surge S1 chipset (previously codenamed “Pinecone”), which in case you forgot is an octa-core chipset with four cores clocked at 2.2GHz, and an additional four cores clocked at 1.4GHz.
The Mi 5c will also feature a 5.15-inch Full HD IPS display, and it will also be accompanied by 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. We’re also looking at a 12MP rear-facing camera, an 8MP front-facing camera, a 2,860mAh battery, a fingerprint sensor on the front, and it is also expected to run on Android 7.1 Nougat.
In terms of pricing, Xiaomi will be launching the phone in China where it will be priced at 1,499 yuan which is roughly $218 after conversion. There’s a good chance we won’t be seeing the Mi 5c debut stateside anytime soon, but it will be interesting to see what other devices the new Surge S1 chipset will find its way into.