Buy a Xiaomi Mi 5 in the UK

Xiaomi is one of the biggest phone makers in China, and it’s increasingly getting its name heard elsewhere. It unveiled the Mi 5 flagship Android phone at MWC 2016. Here we reveal how to buy one in the UK, plus its 5 release date, price, features and specifications.

How to buy the Xiaomi Mi 5 in the UK

Xiaomi phones are not officially sold in the UK, however, it is possible to get hold of them through

Chinese sites such as Geekbuying.com, GearBest. com and Coolicool.com, which we use to supply us with Xiaomi products for review.

The Mi 5 is to cost ¥2,600 (£285) for the high-end 128GB model and ¥1,999 (£219) for the entry-level 32GB version, but the official prices are largely irrelevant if you’re buying in the UK, because you’ll have to pay whatever price you are charged by importers.

Coolicool is also listing the 64GB Xiaomi Mi 5 in black, white and gold at £349.19, and GearBest has its page set up ready for the phone’s arrival at its warehouse. These prices may change from day to day, and note that if you’re shipping to the UK you may have to pay import duty.

If you are buying in the UK, note that the Xiaomi Mi 5 may support only bands 3 (1800MHz) and 7 (2600MHz) for 4G LTE (that’s according to the product listing on various sites, although the Snapdragon 820 is capable of 800MHz). If you have an O2 SIM, or use a network that piggybacks on O2’s network, such as GiffGaff, you should know that the Mi 5 may not support LTE band 20 (800MHz), and you may not receive anything more than 3G.

Features

The Mi 5, which looks a lot like the Mi Note and has what Xiaomi calls a ‘3D ceramic body’, has a 5.15in full-HD (1920x1080) IPS display. Equipped with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core processor it should be an absolute beast for performance. Xiaomi has clocked it at a huge 142,084 points in AnTuTu, but

we’ll wait until we get one into our lab before we make our own judgements. This chip is faster and more energy-efficient than ever, and comes with Adreno 530 graphics and support for ultra-fast Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0.

The Mi 5 is available with 32-, 64- or 128GB of storage, in black, white, gold or pink. The 32- and 64GB models come with 3GB of LP-DDR4 RAM, while the 128GB version has 4GB of RAM. Be sure to choose the correct storage model for your needs, because microSD is not supported.

The primary camera is a 16Mp Sony IMX298 model with a sapphire glass lens, four-axis optical image stabilisation, PDAF autofocus, DTI tech and f/2.0 aperture. It can also shoot 4K video. At the front you get a 4Mp selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture and 2μm large pixels. Marie Brewis

Specifications

5.15in Full HD curved (1080x1920) Android 6.0 Marshmallow Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 820 processor 3GB RAM 32-/64GB storage 16Mp rear camera with LED flash 4Mp front camera 11ac dual-band Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.2 NFC Fingerprint scanner Type-C USB 3000mAh removable battery 144.6x69.2x7.3mm 129g