Reports from the Far East say that the Mi 5 is good to go and they are just waiting for the New Year holidays to finish before launch.  The smartphone's  launch is a little later than expected  and the timing is apparently to limit competition from the likes of Huawei, QiKU and LeTV. Still it is a little earlier than the "not before April" date we were given before.

Underneat the bonnet of the Mi 5 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU which Samsung holds exclusivity to.  We are not sure how Xiaomi got around that point. 

The Mi5 will have a 5.2-inch display and will reportedly come in two variants: 3GB of RAM with 32GB inbuilt storage, and 4GB of RAM with 64GB memory. It is expected to sport a 16-megapixel camera on the rear and a 13-megapixel camera on the front. It will reportedly run Android 6.0 Marshmallow-based MIUI and use a 3,600mAh battery.

Company co-founder and senior vice president Li Wanqiang confirmed the rumorus on China-based Weibo. The release of the Mi 5 may help Xiaomi resume the growth momentum of its smartphone business.