Will The Xiaomi Mi5 Ship With Snapdragon 810 Instead Of 820?

There have already been reports from multiple sources that Xiaomi will be releasing not one, but two devices with the Mi5 moniker this year. The company is said to be delaying the launch of those devices mostly because it wants to bypass the hot mess that is the Snapdragon 810, and start afresh with the upcoming Snapdragon 820 that will have hopefully rectified the 810’s overheating issues.

It’s worth remembering that the current generation Mi Note pro is powered by the Snapdragon 810 chip, and reportedly suffers from the same overheating problems found in other Snapdragon 810 devices like the Xperia Z4 from Sony and Nubia Z9 from ZTE.

Now, latest news coming out of China indicates that Xiaomi may eventually adjust its strategy, and use the Snapdragon 810 after all, in its Mi5 handset. Even then however, the Mi5 Plus will still come with the Snapdragon 820.

The only plausible explanation for this strategy would be the fact that Mi4 was announced in July last year, and Xiaomi doesn’t want to wait for a year and a half for its new release. While using the Snapdragon 810 will allow Xiaomi to release a new product in around September rather than having to wait till the very end of this year, the strategy is fraught with danger and it would be interesting to see if Xiaomi does indeed take that route after the debacles faced by Sony and HTC (One M9).

It is worth noting here, that the Mi5 will come equipped with a fingerprint scanner, although it still isn’t clear whether Qualcomm’s 3D ultrasonic biometric scanner will be ready by then. If yes, Xiaomi might be amongst the first OEMs to launch a device with the aforementioned scanner. If not, the Xiaomi Mi5 / Mi5 Plus will ship with a good old 2D scanner; a technology which is currently employed by Apple and HTC (among others) in their current generation smartphones.