Xiaomi’s long awaited Mi 5 flagship is now expected to be launched in January next year.

Fans of Xiaomi’s flagship Mi series smartphones have been eagerly waiting for the successor to the Mi 4 for months. While rumors have been ripe throughout early 2015 that the Mi 5 would arrive towards the end of the year, and we nearly thought them to be true, Xiaomi ended up announcing the Redmi Note 3 and Mi Pad 2 during their event held on November 24.

A few details about the release of the device were revealed in a recent interview with Lei Jun, the CEO of Xiaomi. Jun said that Xiaomi’s development time for their flagship Mi series phones is between 12 to 18 months, which is slightly longer than the yearly refresh cycle followed by most of its competitors. Jun added that the phone would be “close to perfect” when released, using the best components selected after lots of research and tests. The CEO of the ~$50 billion company also revealed that he’s currently in possession of an Mi 5 prototype, that he, unsurprisingly, considered to be amazing.

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Pan Jiutang, a reputed Chinese analyst who predicted the specifications of the Huawei Nexus phablet, says that the Mi 5 would be unveiled to the world in January 2016 and go on sale in February, specifically after the Spring festival in China. Jiutang made a post on Weibo talking about the aforementioned. He also mentioned in his post that Xiaomi is stocking up on the Mi 5, which is an indication that the company expects huge demand for the device and wishes to sell as many units as possible.

According to previous rumors, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is said to come with a 5.3-inch Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display, 4 GB of RAM, a 16 MP rear camera, 16 or 64 GB of internal storage, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 quad-core chipset. A 3000 mAh battery might be a part of the spec sheet well. There’s no word on pricing, but consider a ballpark figure of $400.

Are you excitedly waiting for the Xiaomi Mi 5? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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