Can the Xiaomi Mi 4 rival the Samsung Galaxy S5? The two phones have many similarities, starting from their mega-manufacturing companies being situated in China. The Xiaomi Mi4 and Samsung Galaxy S5 both operate on Android software, Qualcomm Snapdragon processors and Adreno graphics card. The differences lie in their internal memory capacity, battery life and applications.

Xiaomi, a phone brand from China, has been compared to Apple of the United States by some. The company is valued at $46 billion, outranking Uber which stands at $41 billion. Its founder Le Jun doesn't like the comparison to Steve Jobs. Le Jun is also the CEO of Kingsoft and is also an investor at YY which is worth $1.5 billion according to a book by Can Akdeniz.

The Galaxy S5 was unveiled on 24th of February 2014. Samsung, which is the leading smartphone producer in Asia, continuously floods the market with products designed and manufactured with new cutting-edge technology.

Design and Display

Xiaomi comes in two colors, black and white. However, Galaxy S5 is available in Electric Blue, Shimmery White, Cooper Gold and Charcoal Black.

Xiaomi Mi 4 has a 5 inch, 1080 by 1920 pixels, and a Liquid Crystal Display. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is 5.1 inches long, with a super AMOLED display with 16 million colors capacity. The Xiaomi phone weighs 149 g, while Galaxy S5 weighs 145 g. The S5 has a protective screen made of Gorilla glass 3. Both phones have multi-touch abilities, Mi 4 operates on MIUI interface, while the S5 phone has the Touch Whiz User Interface. The Galaxy beats Xiaomi with its fingerprint sensor that has been certified by PayPal.

Camera and Operating System

Xiaomi has a primary camera of 13MP, with auto-focus feature, LED flash and face detection. The phone also comes with geo-tagging option, panorama, HDR. Its secondary camera is 8MP. Galaxy S5 has a primary camera of 16 MP, features similar to Xiaomi's and a simultaneous video and image recording. The secondary camera is 2MP way less than Xiaomi Mi 4's.

The Mi 4 operates on Android v4.4.3 (KitKat) and a Galaxy S5 also operates on Android v4.4.2 (also KitKat) which is upgradable to Android 5.0 Lollipop. When it comes to the type of processor, both phones operate on Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processors, with speed of 2.5 GHz, on a quad-core Krait 400 CPU. Both phones also have Adreno 330 graphics card.

Memory and Other Features

The Xiaomi phone has an internal storage capacity of 16 GB for the smaller version and 64GB for the bigger size. Its RAM capacity is 3GB. It does not have expandable memory though. The S5 has a storage capacity of 16 GB for the small size and 64 GB as well for the bigger size. The RAM is 3GB with a card slot for a microSD of up to 128 GB.

Other features on the Xiaomi include, active noise cancellation, video editor, voice command, document viewer and an FM Radio. The S5 has air gestures, drop box, smart features. It does not have an FM radio though. They are similar when it comes to the shared accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, gesture, heart rate monitoring functionality in the phone.

Battery Life

Xiaomi's Lithium Ion 3080Ah battery, lasts up to 280 hours on standby. S5's Li-Ion 2800Ah, can last for 390 hours on standby mode.

It can be safe to say that Xiaomi Mi 4 and Samsung Galaxy S5 are similar. The phones share qualities in camera features, internal memory, processor type and speed, and also several functionalities. Mi 4 can be considered a rival to S5 because of its more powerful cameras, though the S5 is superior in other aspects.