Xiaomi Mi 5 to launch in February with Snapdragon 820 and Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0

The Xiaomi Mi 5 has long been rumoured for an early 2016 launch with recent reports suggesting the smartphone will be unveiled on 8 February on the occasion of the Chinese New Year. The flagship device is now confirmed for release one week after its launch date, which effectively points to 27 February.

The release date confirmation comes from Li Wanqiang (co-founder and senior vice-president of Millet) via Chinese microblogging site, Weibo. The information has been Google translated and reported by Android Authority.

The report adds that the Mi5 will be powered by the Snapdragon 820, which replaces the inefficient Snapdragon 810 that was plagued with overheating and performance throttling issues.

The 14nm chipset-based Snapdragon 820 incorporates a completely new architecture comprising the X12 LTE modem, Kryo CPU, Adreno 530 GPU, Hexagon Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and Qualcomm's Spectra ISP. The Kryo CPU is expected to offer twice the performance of the 810.

In addition, the Mi5 will feature 4GB of RAM, and ship in 32GB and 64GB models. Among other rumoured features, the Mi5 will come with a full metal body, including a 5.2in QHD display running at 565ppi, 16 MP rear camera, 8MP front camera, fingerprint sensor and 3,600 mAh battery with support for Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0 standard.

If rumours are anything to go by, the Xiaomi flagship smartphone is expected to retail around £272 ($390) at the time of release.