Upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 flagship will have NFC after all

Xiaomi's next flagship model has been shrouded in a lot of controversy and mystery. It seems we still can't quite put a finger on its exterior nor the exact specs sheet. We have already seen quite a few leaks, regarding a physical home button design – a Xiaomi first. But, none of the images seem to match up perfectly, making even this major novelty uncertain at this point.

Today, however, brings the first more tangible information about the Mi 5's hardware. It appears that Xiaomi has decided to bring back the NFC chip that was dropped from the Mi 4. The information comes from a document released by China UnionPay – the sole domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, detailing support for its newly released NFC-based payment system.

The platform translates loosely to "Cloud Lightening Pay" and much like Android Pay, leverages NFC for authentication purposes. The upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 can be found on the list, as one of the initially supported 32 devices, proving that it will indeed have NFC.

This theory is further backed up by the apparent presence of the Mi 3 on the list as well, which is the last of the family to feature NFC. As already mentioned, it was dropped from the Mi 4 after the OEM discovered that only 1% of Mi 3 and Redmi 2A users were actually using it. But, the new payment system does look like a perfect reason to reintroduce NFC to the device lineup.

As for other preliminary info on the Mi 5 and its alleged Mi 5 Plus sibling, we have heard that the pair will probably use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, but sadly without support for the company's next-gen fingerprint scanning technology (called Snapdragon Sense ID).

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