Xiaomi Unveils Mi 5c Powered by Its First Ever In-House Chipset

While the rest of the world was at the MWC, Xiaomi has announced a new mid-range phone in Beijing alongside its first ever in-house chipset, the Surge S1.

The Surge S1

Xiaomi was said to launch two of its Pinecone chipsets, however, only the lower-end model has been announced so far. The Surge S1 is built using the 28nm process while the flagship Pinecone V970 chipset is said to come with a 10nm fabrication process.

The Surge S1 has eight Cortex-A53 cores. Four of those are clocked at 2.2GHz while the rest of the bunch comes in at 1.4GHz for light tasks.

Initial benchmark results showcase the chipset as one of the best amongst its competitive midrange CPUs. Its CPU benchmark scores give Snapdragon 625, Kirin 650 and MediaTek Helio P20 a run for their money.

Not only does it stand out in CPU performance and even beats the popular Snapdragon 625, the Surge S1 simply kills the competition in graphics performance. It makes use of a Mali-T860MP4 doubles what its competitors can achieve.

GPU performance is a common compromise in the midrange chipset market, but Xiaomi aims to change that with the Surge S1.

Xiaomi has shown some really great performance with its midrange chipset which makes us hopeful that the company’s flagship chip will go toe-to-toe with Snapdragon 835, Exynos 8895 and Kirin 970.

Xiaomi Mi 5c

Mi 5c is midrange variant of the company’s flagship Mi 5s. It retains the good quality metal build but targets the mid-range of the market. Despite the build, the phone only weighs 132 grams and is only 7.09mm thin with no camera bump.

The display on the front measures 5.15-inches with 1080p resolution. It is also quite bright at 550 nits with 2048 brightness adjustment levels and covers 94.4 percent of NTSC color gamut.

Under the hood, you get the new Surge S1 processor alongside 3 GB LPDDR3 of RAM and 64 GB of eMMC 5.0 storage, which is expandable via a microSD card.

The back boasts a 12-megapixel camera with f/2.2 aperture, OIS and LED Flash. It uses larger pixels, much like last year’s flagship smartphones. The front comes with an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.0.

On the software side is Android 7.1 Nougat with Xiaomi’s own MIUI skin. The phone will be available in Black, Gold and Rose Gold variants.

The phone trades in the for its slim 7.09mm design with a 2860 mAh battery, though it does support fast-charging.

The Xiaomi Mi 5c will be available starting early march for $220, at which point it will probably get the toughest competition from Xiaomi’s own phones like the Redmi Note 4 and the Redmi Pro.

Xiaomi Mi 5c Specifications:

  • Chipset: Xiaomi Surge S1
  • Processor: 2.2GHz Octa-core Cortex-A53
  • GPU: Mali-T860MP4
  • OS: Android 7.1 Nougat based MIUI 8
  • Supported Networks: 2G, 3G, 4G LTE; Hybrid-slot
  • Design:
    • Dimensions: 144 x 69.7 x 7.1 mm
    • Weight: 132 grams
  • Display:
    • 5.15” with 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution
  • Memory:
    • RAM: 3 GB
    • Internal: 64 GB
    • Card slot: yes
  • Camera:
    • Primary: 12 MP, LED, OIS, f/2.2, 1.25um pixels
    • Secondary: 8 MP, f/2.0
  • Connectivity: microUSB, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, VoLTE
  • Battery: 2860 mAh; 9V/2A fast-charging
  • Price: $220



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