A few months back when Hugo Barra, Vice President for International, launched the Redmi 1S locally, we got a chance to talk to him about Xiaomi’s competitors coming out with increasingly thinner phones. We asked about the chances that Xiaomi might come out with phones as thin as the 5.5mm Gionee S5.5, which at the time was the thinnest smartphone in the world. Hugo laughed the question off saying (Xiaomi) would never get a phone that thin.
Well, fast forward to the present and it already looks like Xiaomi will be doing just that with the upcoming Mi 5. A Chinese factory worker posted an image of what is allegedly the chassis of the Mi 5. If you think it looks crazy thin in the image, that’s because it is! It measures only 5.1mm thin, which is even thinner than a pencil or ballpoint pen!
Unfortunately, the Mi 5 won’t suddenly become the world’s thinnest smartphone when it eventually does come out. That’s because it’s already been beaten to the punch by the likes of the Gionee Elife S5.1 (5.1mm thin), Oppo R5 (4.85mm thin), and the Vivo X5 Max. Still, performance matters more than aesthetics and if its predecessors are any indicators, we should expect impressive performance despite the cramped chassis.
