Xiaomi announced that the number of users who have registered for the sale of its Mi 5 device has so far reached more than 16.8 million in China.

After unveiling the flagship on Wednesday last week, Xiaomi began accepting registrations for the flash sale of the Mi 5.

The company said that the sale of the Mi 5 will begin on March 1.

An initial report has revealed that the number of registrations from the users had reached over 14.4 million, but an update now reveals it went up to 16.8 million.

While Xiaomi's devices had always been very popular among consumers and had a good track record in terms of sales, the achievement of the new Mi 5 in terms of user registration is a record-breaking success for the company. The impressive number had been easily achieved in a short span of five days.

What makes it even more interesting is the fact that the number is only made up of users from China. Xiaomi is known to launch its devices on core markets, which are currently found in Brazil and in countries in Asia. Other companies such as Samsung and Apple would normally launch their handsets worldwide.

Eager fans of the flagship have been waiting for its launch for over 18 months. It seemed like Xiaomi understood how not to disappoint by delivering a device that has powerful specs and performance features but with a price tag that is unbelievably affordable.

The Xiaomi Mi 5 is one of the most awaited smartphones in 2016. It is also billed as the company's first Android-powered device to run the Snapdragon 820 processor.

Early in February, features of the Xiaomi Mi 5 were revealed at the GFXBench site which the company had eventually confirmed.

The Mi 5 comes with a 5.15-inch display at a resolution of 1080p. The listing also showed the handset to come with a quad-core Snapdragon 820 chipset and a RAM of 3 GB. It will also be packed with Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU.

Other powerful features of the Mi 5 include a 16 MP rear camera, a 4 MP Ultrapixel front camera and a 3,000 mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0.

Xiaomi will reportedly have two variants for the Mi 5 when it becomes available for sale. These will be the standard 3 GB RAM and 32 GB ROM for the first variant while the other will be at 3 GB and 64 GB ROM.  The company also said that only the white color version will be available at launch.

The Mi 5 is currently priced at 1850 yuan (around $282.55) in China. It will have varying prices in other markets.