After exactly 21 months after the widely popular release of the Mi Note and Mi Note PRO last January 2015, Xiaomi finally decided to release another flagship level 5.5 inch smartphone again. Mi 5s Plus finally came into action last Sept 27th 2016 together with the Mi 5s. We were surprise of the timetable it took to release another Note level flagship (tho CEO Lei Jun confirmed of the release for Mi Note 2), Xiaomi simply followed the footsteps of Apple into launching an S series and a Plus series. Lets findout if this phone will live up to our expectations and the hype that its creating.




Introduction Video



What's In the Box















We can see that Xiaomi went back to its old ways, having a plain box (only its white and not brown this time) and a carved MI Logo at the middle of the plain white box. It used to be a plain brown box with a MI Logo print on the top. And for the first time in History, Xiaomi gave away a free back case for the Mi 5s Plus, it seems things are getting brighter inside the package of Xiaomi Flagship phones.


Unboxing Video






Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus Specs:


· Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 quad-core processor 2.35 Ghz
· Adreno 530 GPU 653MHz
· 4GB / 6GB of RAM LPDDR4 1866MHz
· 5.7-inch full HD IPS display ultra bright, energy saving display, Corning Gorilla Glass 4 equivalent protection
· Maximum 550-nit brightness, 94% NTSC color gamut, High Color Saturation
· Polished Brushed Aluminum Metal Back Finish
· 64GB / 128GB of storage
· 13-megapixel dual rear camera, F/2.0 lens, Phase Detection AF, 13MP Color Rear Camera + 13MP Black and White Rear
Camera (confirmed not Sony IMX 378 Sensors as many other website claimed it is)
· 4-megapixel front camera with 2 micro-meter sized sensor
· Finger print scanner
· Dual SIM (nano sim size)
· 3G, LTE, 4G +, VoLTE
· Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, NFC, Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
· 3800mAh battery
· Android Marshmallow, MIUI 8
· USB-C port, UFS 2.0
· Silver, Grey, Gold, Pink

Design
The Mi 5s Plus sports an polished brushed aluminum metal finished back which is pretty similar to that of the Redmi Pro, this is very different from the Mi 5s in terms of appearance, we normally see the camera placement of the Mi Series on the upper left corner of the phone but this one is similar to that of the Redmi Note series, in the upper middle of the backcase. Now many people has noticed the missing MI Logo on the upper left corner of the display panel, we have no idea what's going on but we all know that the Mi Logo in the front symbolized a MI series smartphone, and a no Mi Logo in front signifies a Redmi Series smartphone. But as they say, Iphone never sported an Apple logo in the front panel, maybe they are just following their footsteps. There is a large chance that they are doing just that. We just saw CEO Lei Jun being asked about the missing MI Logo here as he went on live chat at Mi Live.





Above the frame we have the the 3.5mm audio jack, IR Blaster and the noise cancellation Mic. We are glad they did not take it off, otherwise our Pistons headset collection will just go to waste. And gladly they did not put the noise cancellation Mic at the back of the phone like on Mi 5s which make it looking so awkward.



On the right side we have the volume rocker and the power button. We are not sure about the breaking lines above the volume up and below the power button if it is the antennae or it’s just a design patterned to the Iphone 6S.



On the left side we have the sim tray which supports 2 Nano sim cards and sadly it’s not the same as Mi 4S which sports a hybrid sim 2 slot for either a Micro SD card or a Nano Sim. But all Xiaomi flagship never had a micro sd card expansion slot anyway. There are those enthusiast who were able to fuse the Nano sim to the body of the Micro SD card and made sim 2 and expansion storage work at the same time, but there is a risk of stuck up upon ejecting the sim tray.



Below the frame we have the USB-C port which is standard for all future smartphones released by Xiaomi, and the loudspeaker is placed at the left and right of the charging port, again these holes are pretty similar to the Iphone 6S, and the loudspeaker is pretty strong on output volume.



In the front we have the 5.7" display and the 4MP selfie camera. The design is similar to the Mi4 since all buttons below are capacitive and the fingerprint scanner is not present in front.



The back sports a polishedbrushed aluminum metal finish together with the 13MP Color Rear Camera + 13MP Black and White Read Camera together with dual LED flash. The fingerprint scanner lies below the two camera lens of the phone. The overall feel on the Mi 5s Plus is very smooth like the Redmi Pro, Xiaomi did a heck of a job in squeezing in all those goodies inside the Mi 5s Plus. Now people will start to ask why did Xiaomi downgraded the camera from 16MP of the Mi 5 to 13MP in the Mi 5s Plus, let me tell you that the quality of the photos does not rely on the number of megapixel present in th camera, this is not strength in numbers, rather it relies on the quality of sensor that the phone is using. This dual lens camera is good in taking Bokeh snaps.




Display
The Mi 5s Plus comes with a full HD, 5.7-inch display coupled with a 2.5D curved glass and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 equivalent protection for maximum resistance against scratches. One of the top reason why Mi 5s Plus did not have a QHD (2K) display similar to the Mi Note Pro is because it drains the battery too fast as witnessed by those who have the later unit described. Plus having a 2K display on a mobile is a bit practically useless as everyone gears towards better battery performance for the phone and not much importance on the rendered display. But we love the display on the Mi 5s Plus, clear and crisp, similar to that of the Mi 5s.



Putting Mi 5s Plus and Mi 5s side by side and running Captain America: Civil War movie on 1080p, we saw the display is the same and have not much difference based on our careful observation.



Snapdragon 821
One of the early adopter of the latest Snapdragon 821 is the Mi 5s and Mi 5s Plus. This said SoC has 4 cores and can run up to 2.35Ghz of computing speed. Now of course coupled with the powerful Adreno 530, it will give you the best experience in gaming up to date. This powerful processor combined with the power of Adreno 530 makes this phone one of the beast to look out for this 3rd Quarter of 2016. We ran several stress test on this unit and we did not see any lags nor any slowdown on the opening of any apps in the Mi 5s Plus. This SoC is already supporting the 64-bit architecture which means it can compute at a very fast phase. So good graphics, good multitasking plus fast processing makes Snapdragon 821 on of the beastly SoC we have handled. We tried playing NBA2k17 and all we can say is that it was really Awesome! We even made a video to compare the speed of both the 64GB variant and 128GB variant, check out our video below. Lets see if 6GB of RAM has any effect in opening apps and bootup speed.










For more information about the Snapdragon 821, check this detailed explanation done by one of our Device Team member @rahul_09


Connectivity
The Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus supports 10 different LTE bands as well as VoLTE, it's easy to switch to LTE network inside the settings but once your do the second sim will be running on GSM connectivity only. You can freely choose which sim you want to use your LTE data, since this is a Dual LTE, Dual standby smartphone. This unit also has the 4G+ equipped, should your network provider have this feature, you can take advantage of it. Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac is also smooth and it also supports Wi-Fi Direct. Wireless screen mirroring is also available via the Miracast protocol, tethering data is also working perfectly. Bluetooth 4.2,GPS, and GLONASS are all present, NFC (Near Field Communication) is also present as Xiaomi gears toward Mi Pay and it enables you to send data to a fellow NFC user with just tapping your phones together. The NFC was one of the features that was missing in the Mi Note Series, otherwise it could have been awesome.





Here are the bands that Mi 5s supports based on the official site

• FDD-LTE (band B1, B3, B5, of B7)
  the TD-the LTE (band the B38, B39, and B40, B41)
  the TD-SCDMA (band cylinder B34, B39)
  the WCDMA (bands B1, B2, B5, B8)
  the GSM (band B2 , B3, B5, B8)
  CDMA1X / EVDO (band BC0)
  
  

Audio and Video


The Mi 5s Plus sports a pretty good speaker, loud and clear. We have compared the output audio of Mi 5s Plus against the Mi 5s and we proved that the loudspeaker of the Mi 5s Plus rocks the music louder than the Mi 5s. Mi 5s Plus supports a wide range of video format like MKV, MP4, M4V, AVI, XVID and more. I can even support 4k H265 videos in the process. While watching Blueray Ripped copy of Captain America: Civil War, we can conclude that Mi 5s Plus has a good bright display. We were able to see the phone clearly under bright sunlight as well for this unit.



Camera
The main focus of Xiaomi in Mi 5s Plus is primarily in its 13MP Dual Rear Camera. We believe that this feature is one of the main highlight of the phone as Xiaomi claim it has one 13MP Color Read Camera in addition to the 13MP Black and White Read Camera, merge it and it will become one fantastic photo. Check some previews here. Many claimed that it is dual Sony IMX 378 sensors, but as we managed to get words from the production, its not Sony sensors, just to difuse rumors swirling around. This dual 13 MP snapper is equipped with the Clearsight Technology and a high definition sensor, with PDAF (Phase Detection AutoFocus, commonly present in DSLR cameras) and DTI (Deep Trench Technology) and one thing that is lacking is the OIS feature and the 4-Axis OIS present in the Mi 5. While we have taken several snaps with this camera while on the road using the Mi 5s Plus as a daily driver, we can note that the camera lacks speed in focus but takes good photos under good lightings but a bit underperforming under dark places. Here are some of our photos that are not edited. We will also show you some snaps comparing the Mi 5s Plus and the Mi 5s camera as well.






Photo Gallery
Unedited Photos




























































































Mi 5s vs Mi 5s Plus Shots (under automatic mode)
We 5s

Mi 5s More

We 5s

Mi 5s More

We 5s

Mi 5s More

We 5s

Mi 5s More

We 5s

Mi 5s More

Battery and Benchmark
While packing in 3800mAh inside a thin unibody is not in anyway easy to do, the Mi 5s Plus has a pretty good battery life for a Note level smartphone. The Mi 5s now supports the Qualcomm Quickcharge 3.0 and it takes in 2.5 Amperes based on our testing, this should be higher when you buy a Quick Charge 3.0 charger, the reason why Xiaomi only included a Quick Charge 2.0 charger is due to cost cutting to bring it to you at the lowest price possible. We were able to charge from 12% to 25% in less than 5 minutes out the box as that’s the only factory charge they gave us together with the unit. We were able to complete charging the phone in 1 hour and 20 minutes. We recorded a 14 hour 36 minute on the Mi 5s Plus 64gb and 11 hour 33 minute on the Mi 5s Plus 128GB under the PC Mark battery stress test. If these statistics are true on daily use, then we can say goodbye to Mi Note.






We were not surprised with the benchmark of the Mi 5s Plus 64GB hitting AnTuTu benchmark for 126,017 points which is pretty lower than the 139k recorded on the 4GB variant of the Mi 5s. The Mi 5s Plus 128GB 6GB RAM 2.35Ghz on the other hand scored 135,822 points. This is way lower than the 164,119 point claimed by Xiaomi during their launch, we used the version 6.2.1 while Xiaomi claimed to have used version 6.19 of the AnTuTu benchmark tester. Does it really make a difference? For me, its the performance that counts, the score is just another figure to brag about.








Mi 5s Plus 64GB Test Results














Mi 5s Plus 128GB Test Results














More Photos to Indulge











Mi 5s Plus, Powerful but Camera could have been Better...


Now the question is Mi 5s Plus worthy to dethrone Mi Note at the new Note level flagship for Xiaomi Mi Series? Let me say we love everything the Mi 5s Plus has to offer except 3 things, the lacking of OIS in the camera feature, the slow focus of the dual camera and the almost same design as the Redmi Pro. We have our hopes high to catch a score of 164k on AnTuTu, it just didnt happen even we ran the app for 15 times in a row fresh out of the box. We absolutely love the phone, but the design makes us a bit reluctant to consider it as a flagship for the Xiaomi Mi Series.


Worthy upgrade? I would have to say wait for Mi Note 2 and compare before doing an upgrade. But if upgrading from Mi Note, its definetly a YES!


The 64GB variant retails for 2299 RMB and the 128GB variant retails at 2599 RMB.


http://www.mi.com/mi5splus/






You must be wondering who this pretty girl is? {:4_118:} Her name is Ms. Lyra, she is a supermodel who we caught up during our photoshoot using the Mi 5s Plus, we thank her for holding the Mi 5s and Mi 5s Plus for us. Such a lovely lady indeed!






Bonus


Mi 5s Plus vs Mi Note Video Comparison






Since its almost Christmas Season, we tried to pull another good comparison, presenting photo comparison between Mi 5s Plus and the Jet Black Mi Note!













Disclaimer: Please don't send me any PM regarding any type of Sales related inquiries. I'm a Xiaomi enthusiast but not a seller of Mi Products. I'm just a hardcore Xiaomi Fan, one notch higher than many of you here. Also I'm a Tech Blogger in the Philippines and all my review devices are either bought by myself from Xiaomi or borrowed from someone for a short period of time.