Xiaomi New Product Launch: Company Posts Teasers On Weibo For July 16 Event

Xiaomi Corp. has posted a set of teaser images on Chinese social media site Weibo that many are taking to herald the arrival of the much awaited Mi 5 flagship smartphone. There is also speculation, on social media sites, about a television.

The teasers include several images, all with the same dark background and the letters “PK” displayed prominently. One of the images has what might be construed as a slim smartphone seen edgewise, while another has what could be phones, tablets or even television screens staggered one behind another. It's unclear what "PK" denotes.

A third, and the one with the most details, looks like a charger with the pins facing away from the viewer, and the Mi logo clearly visible on the back. Each of these images carries the date 7/16 on it and Chinese users that have shared the teasers on the site also refer to guessing a code involving the number 5 and the letter F, based on the Google translation of their comments.

Xiaomi’s next edition of its Mi series mid- to-high-end phones could include an embedded fingerprint scanner, according to media reports in China that have previously cited a patent filing by the country’s largest smartphone maker for the technology.

Such a smartphone, which the reports say is the Mi 5 -- the successor to the Mi4 -- would put Xiaomi in the league of Apple Inc., with its iPhone 6, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., with the Galaxy S6, both of which have fingerprint sensors.

The Xiaomi Mi5 will likely have a 5.2-inch screen, a Snapdragon 810 chip, 4GB RAM, 16MP camera with optical image stabilization, and a battery with “at least” 3000mAh capacity, according to a report by GizmoChina.

Rumors of the Mi5 had ratcheted up around December, with reports of a launch at the CES event in January in Las Vegas, but instead, Xiaomi launched a new flagship called the Mi Note, with a larger screen, at another event in China on Jan. 15.

Each of the teaser images also comes with its own caption, which also lend credence to the possibility that the Mi 5 might be launched on July 16. Based on a Google translation, one could be taken to mean “exhaustive refinement,” while another refers to the “Dengfeng technology” or “Dengfeng process,” which was associated with the manufacturing of the Mi 4 smartphone.

A third caption refers to “innovation from the scratch,” again raising the possibility that an all-new product will be launched. While fans undoubtedly want this to be the Mi 5, there is also some speculation about the launch of the MiTV 3.