The press conference was still in full swing, and Lei Jun, eyes faintly red, kept talking his way through the story of why he set out to build phones and why he believed value for money still mattered. He knew people were skeptical about the Mi 5 line's pricing, so he unpacked the reasoning carefully, not as a defense but as a promise that Xiaomi would keep stretching for better hardware and better polish without losing sight of ordinary buyers.
He pivoted to one more device, the Mi 5S, a compromise for users with thinner wallets. It shared the compact size and screen of the Mi 5, but swapped the ceramic back for a composite "gold" shell that was cheaper to make and friendlier to mass production. The trims ran leaner, too. The processor stepped down to the Snapdragon 700, which is not in the same league as the Snapdragon 900 inside the Mi 5 Pro, though still strong in the current market. The rear camera array was pared back to a 24-megapixel main plus a 5-megapixel wide-angle, while the front shooter sat at 12 megapixels. It was plainly a mid-ranger measured against its pricier siblings, yet honest in what it aimed to be: competent, smooth, and affordable.
Then he brought up the numbers everyone was waiting for, and the hall, quiet a heartbeat ago, crackled again.
• 3GB+32GB: ¥1,699 (≈$260)
• 3GB+64GB: ¥1,999 (≈$300)
The applause came in waves. It was not the delirium of the old days, when ¥1,999 felt like a revolution, but it was solid and warm. Lei Jun stood center stage and listened, accepting the change in mood without flinching. If Xiaomi huddled forever in the three-thousand-yuan tier, he knew it would be boxed there. Spreading the product stack across price bands was the way forward.
Domestically, Huaxing Technology had already set that template. From around ¥1,000 up to ¥7,000, you could always find a Huaxing device that made sense for your budget. Watching the stream from his office, Heifeng exhaled. Harmony S3 was still riding a good breeze in the market, but at last it had a serious headwind to tack into.
The morning after the event, sales began at ten. The numbers were frightening in the way only an internet flash flood can be. The high-ticket Mi 5 Pro moved roughly 300,000 units in its first hour. The standard Mi 5, priced to tempt, hit about 600,000 that same hour. And the junior Mi 5S was a monster. "Three hundred thousand units in three seconds, one million cleared in ten seconds." The words "sold out" stamped across Xiaomi's official page looked almost unreal on Heifeng's monitor, but he knew they were real enough. Under the company's Weibo, complaints stacked up. Many people were at work at ten in the morning. They didn't even get to click.
"Second round on July 15." That was Xiaomi's reply, crisp and unapologetic. The comment threads went stunned and then nostalgic. People had seen this movie somewhere before, even if they couldn't place the first screening.
While the internet frothed, Heifeng received a guest in the reception room who could not be underestimated in the phone world. "Teacher Luo, welcome, welcome." "President He, you're too kind." The man was an online legend with a sharp tongue and a sharper silhouette. People called him Luo Hammer.
For Heifeng, Luo was an unlikely idol. Xiaomi launches felt like pop concerts when Lei Jun was in full flow. Luo's launches were stand-up sets that detonated on cue. He wasn't a trained engineer. He became a star English lecturer through sheer grind in his early years, then shot to fame online with hard-edged, unforgettable lines: "A tough life needs no explanation." "Everyone is out here trying to make a living." "Every life is destined to change the world." That last one still circled the web like a comet.
He stepped down from the lectern one year and slipped sideways into electronics. There was a brief, fascinating brush with Lei Jun, an alternate future where he might have joined Xiaomi. Temperaments clashed, and the timeline snapped back. Instead, he founded his own company, Hammer Technology. Among Mi fans, that parting became the ultimate what-if. If Luo had joined, some said, Xiaomi could have turned every product unveiling into a cultural event and pulled in users on sheer gravitational charisma.
Hammer Technology started with digital accessories, then, seeing smartphones explode, hit the accelerator. Luo's feel for product trends was sharper than many gave him credit for. The "medium cup, large cup, super large cup" segmentation he liked to riff on would eventually seep into mainstream lineups. Last April, Hammer shipped its first phone, the Hammer T1. On paper, it was a beast, a domestic top-tier configuration for its time, and its industrial design even snagged a global award.
Yet the road bucked. A beautiful design can be a factory's nightmare; even Foxconn needed time to tame it. When volume finally came online, quality control bit back with the thousand small cuts that only mass production reveals. Pricing didn't help either. The most basic 2GB+16GB trim was ¥3,000, roughly \$460, a hard sell against rivals with similar silicon and lower stickers. The T1 earned admiration but not enough customers; admiration does not pay suppliers.
None of that diminished the man sitting across from Heifeng. Luo understood how users felt a handset in one hand and a life in the other. He cracked jokes in public, but privately, he could dissect an interface with a surgeon's calm, and he had that exacting itch for the last two percent of polish that separates the memorable from the merely adequate.
They talked about what the Mi 5 wave meant. For Xiaomi, it was vindication that a dual-track strategy could work, one ladder for flagship ambitions, another for value stalwarts. For everyone else, it was a shot across the bow. A brand with tight online channels, restless fans, and real industrial muscle could still pull off instant-sellout theatrics, even in a market that had grown more cynical.
For Huaxing, Heifeng said, it meant staying the course while adjusting the sails. Harmony S3's strength lies in how hardware, systems, and services are meshed. They would not chase every "¥1,999" headline. They would choose where to press: camera pipelines, heat control, long-tail fluency, the quiet, complicated things. Luo nodded. "Choose your battles." He smiled and added that slogans travel faster than algorithms, but algorithms win longer.
They moved, naturally, to talk of supply. Hype creates pressure that only factories can answer. If you cannot build fast and well, all the posters in the world cannot save you. Luo's T1 scars made him blunt on this point. A beautifully milled frame that yields two faulty units for every good one is not a premium flourish but a liability. Heifeng agreed. He had fought those fights, counting good shells, bad shells, and the hours in between.
When the meeting wound down, Heifeng walked Luo to the elevator. The hallway hummed with the everyday music of a company at work, footsteps and clipped conversations, and the distant click of keyboards. Luo's public persona was all quips and punchlines, but at the doors, he looked thoughtful. "The market is cruel," he said, "and also fair." He meant that craft still counted, that users were not just price tags, and that a good phone finds its people if you give it enough truth.
Back upstairs, Heifeng checked the dashboards one more time. Mi's numbers were still sprawled across the news feeds, and the comment storms were swirling. July 15 would be another spectacle. He closed the window and opened a different document with nothing flashy on it: a schedule of engineering checkpoints, a triangle of dates, risks, and fallback plans. Trends roared in the open, but the future, he knew, was built in rooms like this, with quiet work and stubborn patience.