Xiaomi unveiled this week the new Redmi Note 3 smartphone and the Mi Pad 2 tablet at a press event in China. A noticeable absentee was the long-rumored and highly-anticipated Mi 5. However, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun assured that the smartphone will be worth the wait.

Sadly, Jun did not share hardware details of Xiaomi's upcoming high-end flagship, but the executive did say the development team is speeding up its work cycle. This means fans should expect less time between product releases, as per G for Games.

Reports of Xiaomi working on a sequel to the Mi 4 first cropped up in late 2014. PhoneArena reported back then that the Chinese OEM would showcase the smartphone at CES 2015 in January. Of course, it never did show up at the event.

In June, TechNews indicated that the Mi 5 was delayed due to overheating issues plaguing Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 SoC. As such, Xiaomi officials decided to postpone the Mi 5's release date until Qualcomm finishes mass production of its upcoming Snapdragon 820 SoC, which is likely to occur in the first few months of 2016.

There were also rumors claiming Xiaomi was split between the SD 820 and the ten-core Helio X20 from Mediatek. The former supports Qualcomm's Ultrasound technology while the latter is hands-down the faster chipset.

A test model of the Mi 5, with the Helio X20 under the hood, tallied 73,075 points on the AnTuTu benchmark. The score easily surpassed the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, powered by the Exynos 7420. Both high-end flagships from Samsung scored near the 70,000 mark, GSM Arena reported.

According to Xiaomi Today, known specs of the Mi5 include the following:

  • 5.3-inch screen with 1440x2560 Quad HD display
  • 4 ]GB of RAM
  • 16GB or 64GB internal memory models with no support for micro-SD expansion
  • 16-megapixel back camera with dual-LED flash and eight-megapixel front-facing unit
  • 3,030 mAh battery
  • USB Type-C connector

The Mi 5 is said to cost ¥1,999 in China, that's approximately $316. The smartphone runs on the company's very own Android-based OS known as the MIUI 7.

Folks in the U.S. shouldn't expect too much of the Mi 5 as Jun said this week that China remains to be the primary market. Xiaomi's home country is followed by emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Brazil. Lastly, Jun explained that "it will take some time" before the Xiaomi makes its way to other regions like Japan or the U.S.