This year’s MWC brought to the world a great device with a mid-range price tag – Xiaomi Mi 5. With this brand name still new to the ears of many Americans, the company chose not to risk availing the Mi 5 to the most sought-after smartphone market.
The company has further remained coy on the matter, but with last year’s launching of its online store in the U.S., there are signs that Xiaomi will soon be selling its products in the country. Coming to the U.S. with its Xiaomi Mi 5 and succeeding will mean brushing aside major players like LG, something that might prove quite easy for the Chinese maker if it goes on releasing devices like the Mi 5. LG G5 was announced last month, but it has yet to hit the stores. However, late last year saw the company announce a phablet called LG V10, which is still very fresh in the market. With this in mind, here is a look at what the latest Xiaomi Mi 5 brings to the table in comparison to the LG V10.
Design language
Both the LG V10 and Xiaomi Mi 5 have a metal frame, however, the latter has a glass back with a fingerprint on the home button. There is also a ceramic back edition known as Xiaomi Mi 5 Pro. As mentioned at the beginning, the Mi 5 is smaller in size as compared to the LG V10. The latter also comes with a textured silicone rear where the fingerprint sensor is also located. The V10’s design sees a second screen come on top of the primary display, which can be used to play the same role as the Always On feature introduced on the flagship LG G5.
Display size
The LG V10 is larger in size than the Xiaomi Mi 5, coming in with a 5.7-inch IPS LCD screen that boasts of a 2K resolution and a pixel density of 515ppi. The secondary screen has a size of 2.1 inches, which should be enough to display things like notifications, calendar as well as time and date, among others.
The Xiaomi Mi 5 also features an IPS LCD screen, but the Chinese OEM packed a smaller 5.15-inch screen size that also manages a smaller, but still decent resolution of 1080p. This translates to a pixel density of 428ppi.
Hardware and software
Being a 2016 model, the Xiaomi Mi 5 comes with the latest hardware as compared to what the LG V10 has to offer. You will find a Snapdragon 820 SoC, Adreno 530 GPU and a 3GB/4GB of RAM in the Xiaomi Mi 5 (the Pro version comes with a RAM of 4GB). In essence, these are the 2016 flagship specs. Xiaomi offers the standard Mi 5 with 32GB and 64GB storage variants while the Pro version only comes with a 128GB variant. There is no room for expandable storage on all three variants.
For the LG V10, it comes with very capable hardware that consists of a Snapdragon 808 SoC, Adreno 418 GPU and still carries a decent RAM of 4GB. This device is still very capable as far as the spec sheet is concerned. The V10 has an onboard storage of 32GB and 64GB, with both variants capable of expanding the storage using a microSD card.
On photography, both devices are equipped with some of the best snappers. The Mi 5 carries 16MP and 4MP snappers while the V10 has a similar 16MP snapper on the rear but two 5MP cameras for taking selfies.
Price
The pricing aspect of the Xiaomi Mi 5 vs. LG V10 is the most interesting part. This is because despite the former coming in with 2016 flagship specs, it is only available for $305 (32GB) and $415 (128GB). The latter has a massive price tag of $672 for the base model.