The first quarter of 2016 has been exciting to smartphone enthusiasts, with manufacturers having released a host of future-ready smartphones. Among these were the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Xiaomi Mi 5. Both smartphones were officially announced during the MWC 2016 event in February.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are available for purchase at $755 for the Galaxy S7 and $862 for the Galaxy S7 Edge. The prices mentioned are for the 32GB variant of the phones.
The Xiaomi Mi5 was announced side-by-side with the Galaxy S7. The phone is available for purchase in China only and will come to the US markets sometime in the month of April.
Considered better than most other releases, the Samsung Galaxy S7 sports a 5.1 Quad HD Super AMOLED display, with either Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 820 chip or an Exynos 8890 chip. Samsung will allegedly ship Qualcomm-powered phones to Asian markets this year and sell the Exynos 8890 based smartphones in the US and European markets, opposite to what it has traditionally done so far.
Available with a 4GB RAM, the graphics on the phone are supported with an Adreno 530 GPU with Qualcomm chips and Mali -T880 MP12 with the devices running on the Exynos processor. The rear of the phone houses a 12MP auto-focus, dual-pixel camera and the front has a 5MP shooter.
The camera on the Galaxy S7 brings professional grade photography to the smartphone with accentuated auto-focus, improved low-light imaging, higher detail and the inclusion of ‘motion camera’ technology to improve panoramic shots.
The Galaxy S7 offers good power with a non-removable 3000mAh battery, ships with Android’s latest Marshmallow 6.0 and is available in 32GB and 64GB variants of internal storage.
Xiaomi’s Mi 5 certainly does not fall far behind when it comes to the specifications of the phone. Fashioned with a plastic body, the Mi 5 is slimmer and lighter than the Galaxy S7 measuring 7.3mm in thickness and weighing 129 grams.
Xiaomi Mi 5 sports a 5.15-inch IPS LCD screen, that’s 0.05” more than the Galaxy S7, and features processing chips with different speeds for different variants. The 32GB variant of the phone comes along with a processing speed of 1.8GHz along with a Snapdragon 820 chip with 3GB of RAM, the 64GB variant of the phone has a processing speed of 2.15GHz with a Snapdragon 820 chip and 3GB of RAM; and the 128GB variant has a processing speed of 2.15GHz with a Snapdragon 820 chip and 4GB of RAM.
The Mi 5 has a 16MP camera at the back of the phone with auto-focus and 4K recording capabilities while the front of the phone has a 4MP camera. Graphics run smoothly with the Adreno 530 GPU, and a 3,000mAh battery provides long usage cycles; recharging instantly with ‘Quick Charge 3.0’ technology.
The phone is available in the colors of Gold, Ceramic, Black and White and ships with Android’s Marshmallow 6.0 loaded on it that runs the MIUI 7.0 skin on top of it.
