Two years and two high-end (ish) smartphones. That’s all it took to catapult Xiaomi from a no-name, novice company in the mobile décor to worldwide sensation. True, Xiaomi is yet to break the Chinese borders, but rumor has it Europe and America will be part of the company’s mobile revolution come next year.

And boy, does Xiaomi have some goodies prepped for the near future! The Mi2’s full-fledged successor, most likely dubbed Mi3, is to land in the fall with groundbreaking specs, while for now we have to focus on a slightly less impressive, but still very exciting duo.

The Mi2S and Mi2A have been made official just a few hours ago and they already look like winners. Both affordable by Western standards, they also distinguish themselves from your regular high-enders with not so huge displays.

The Mi2S, the more powerful sibling, sports a 4.3-inch IPS display with a 1,280 x 720 pixels resolution. Kind of “meh”, right? Maybe, but there’s nothing “meh” about the quad-core 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU and 2 GB of RAM beneath this baby’s hood.

In fact, Xiaomi says the Mi2S beats the Samsung Galaxy S4 in synthetic benchmarks, with whopping scores like 25,913 in AnTuTu. Our tested Snapdragon-based GS4 scored about as much a while back, but naturally we have no way to verify if Xiaomi’s claims are legit.

Aside from the new chip, the Mi2S is not awfully different from last year’s Mi2, coming with 16 and 32 GB of internal storage, dual 8 MP/2 MP cams, a 2,000 mAh battery and Jelly Bean-based MIUI. Due out in China, but also Hong Kong and Taiwan soon, the new fellow will cost 1,999 Yuan ($319) in the 16 GB variant, and 2,299 Yuan ($367) with 32 gigs.

As for the Mi2A, this is set to be even cheaper, at 1,499 Yuan, or $239. But there’s a good reason for that, with the spec sheet being a little less impressive – a dual-core 1.7 GHz S4 Pro CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage.

Then again, the display is a little larger, at 4.5 inches, the profile is thinner (9.5 mm), while the cameras, battery and on-board software are the same as on the Mi2S. Not too shabby!

How about it, folks? Can Xiaomi leap to the next fame level with the Mi2S and Mi2A? How great are these phones’ quality-price ratios?