You win some, you lose some. That's what most
Android makers have to deal with when they try to lower the price tag on
a smartphone.
Tossing in a less powerful processor, removing sensors and
all sorts of other "luxury" components and features, all in the noble
quest to make the smartphone more affordable and get it into more hands.
Some companies go too low and present a crippled phone that’s nowhere
near the capabilities of the flagship phone it's based upon. Others end
up with a compromise between performance and price, presenting a
smartphone that's shaved only a few features but also shaved only some
of the cost.
Motorola has bucked the trend with its Moto G,
a phone that threw the smackdown on Samsung and HTC with its awesome
performance and a S$318 price tag. It's become the benchmark for all
wannabe budget smartphones to follow. It's unrivalled, reigning supreme
as the best value-for-money Android device available, armed to the teeth
with above-average hardware without burning a hole in your wallet.
Yesterday, that was true. But today there's a new kid on
the budget smartphone block. An affordable Android 4.2 cracker from
Chinese company Xiaomi.
Meet the Redmi.
Build: modest yet practical
Manage
your expectations - you’re going to see a lot of plastic on this budget
Android device. None of the cool metal or sleek lines of an HTC One
appear anywhere near the Redmi. But it’s not all bad, the plastic build
keeps its weight manageable at 158g. You won’t even get a decent biceps
workout while you fiddle with the phone. The build is pretty solid,
too. Not enough to toss and knock someone out, but sufficient to know
that it’s sitting comfortably in your pockets.
Can’t live with the dull colours the phone came in? Give it
a makeover. You get to choose between a subtle dark grey and flashy
bright red rear cover to match your mood. These colour options are
broken down to a matte or glossy choice. Want to avoid those smudgy
fingerprints? Go for the matte cover and screen protector sold
separately on Xiaomi’s online retail store.
You still want more colour options? There are five more to
choose from when you strap the Redmi with the soft gel covers - white,
rose, blue, yellow and black.
Display: comfortable on the eyes
Its 4.7in display is a tad larger than the Moto G’s
modest 4.5in screen. At the same display resolution of 1280 x 720
pixels, the Redmi’s display density is therefore lower than the Moto G’s, but but not by much - it's 312ppi to the Motorola's 326ppi (which in turn matches the old iPhone 5's pixel density).
The
numbers don’t tell the full story anyway. The Redmi proves that point
when you watch a movie on its 720p IPS panel. Viewing angles are great.
So good, it bugged us when our fellow commuters were able to peek at the
screen from the sides. Under direct sunlight, text and images are still
legible, thanks to the screen’s capable auto-brightness setting. Colour
richness is another surprise - it’s almost an even match against the
OLED displays we've recently seen, with only black depth lacking on the
Redmi's Sharp-made display when compared side-by-side with the more
expensive tech. At this price, we'll happily take that compromise.
Camera: lucky number 8
Unlike the Moto G,
the Redmi doesn’t hold back in the imaging department. The 8-megapixel
sensor really gets the job done, with a snappy autofocus and a strong
attention to details. Add HDR enhancement and you can fake it as a
world-class photographer when you produce bokeh shots with the camera’s
f/2.2 aperture.
Don’t expect it to match the likes of the Nokia Lumia 1020 or Apple’s iPhone 5s,
but it’s good for basic food photography to tantalise your friends’
tastebuds on Facebook or Twitter. Just don’t take it on your spy
adventures - under low-light conditions, photos end up as grainy
portraits.
Besides its decent photography skills, the camera app
deserves an extra brownie point for its integrated QR code reader. If
only it also had the camera smarts of Oppo’s rotating 13-megapixel camera, but that’s really too much to ask for in a budget Android smartphone.
READ MORE: Oppo N1 phablet coming to Malaysia
Performance: it’s not about the numbers
We’re
about halfway through this review, and you must be wondering when we’ll
use the “this is a great phone, but…” disclaimer. Wait for it, it’s
coming soon, let us share the rest of the good stuff first.
It might come in at under S$200, but the Redmi is still
armed with a quad-core processor. Yes, a quad-core clocked to 1.5GHz.
Now if you’re snobbish about the brand, this isn’t a Qualcomm Snapdragon
or Nvidia Tegra brain we’re looking at. Heard of MediaTek? No? Neither
had we, and we reserved some skepticism for this relatively unknown
chip.
Sure enough, the AnTuTu benchmark rated the Redmi with a
score of 16,492. A far cry from your usual quad-core line-up, most of
which are above 20,000. Is that sufficient reason to give the Xiaomi
phone the thumbs down?
Once again, numbers aren’t everything. The benchmark score
serves as a gauge, but it doesn’t consider the actual user experience.
In this case, the Redmi is far from being crippled. The interface is
exceedingly smooth thanks to the MIUI (more on that later) and it takes
on multitasking with gusto. At one point, we counted 6 apps running in
the background and it felt as though the unit wanted more, welcoming the
opportunity to test its legs. And the Redmi has no problems with
graphics-heavy games such as Dead Trigger 2 and Real Racing 3, leaving little doubt that this little ripper isn't afraid of a spot of heavy lifting.
Connectivity options don’t deviate far from the standard
offering - Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and an array of sensors to shake and
sort your apps are included. The Redmi also comes with dual SIM support,
allowing you to receive and send both calls and messages on two
different numbers concurrently.
Sounds too good to be true? Time to burst the bubble - it’s
a great phone, but it lacks 4G connectivity. None of those
faster-than-you-can-blink download speeds here. Yeah, good luck waiting
for our selfie-crazy friends’ photos to appear on Instagram. Plus, once
we overloaded it with more than 10 apps and hit the 1GB memory limit, it
showed visible lag when it transitioned between apps. It's not a
deal-breaker, but it does mean keeping a watchful eye on background
tasks and properly closing those that you're no longer using.
At this point, Xiaomi’s MIUI swoops in to save the day.
READ MORE: Motorola Moto G review
OS: unleashing Android’s full potential
Put
the price and the specs to one side and there are still two reasons
that you'll want the Redmi - MIUI 5.0 and themes. The former, which is a
customised Android ROM that led to Xiaomi’s meteoric rise in China, was
its starting point before it started making its own smartphones. It was
also a huge pull factor for Hugo Barra, then Google Android’s vice
president for product management who’s now leading Xiaomi’s
international expansion plans as its global vice president.
Xiaomi placed a lot of attention on the MIUI interface.
Every detail, from menu and app transitions, to font size and app icons,
are a notch above Google’s stock Android UI. In more ways than one, the
UI reminds us of Apple’s iOS 7 - apps are displayed on the home page,
rather than a cacophony of icons sitting within the app drawer.
The beauty of MIUI is that you can apply themes to change
up the interface. The extreme makeover replaces everything, right down
to the app icons, with a customised user interface designed by other
MIUI users. Over 5000 themes, which cost nothing to below S$2, are
housed in the Xiaomi Theme store.
But deep down, MIUI has more to offer than aesthetic
makeovers. MIUI has the option to switch between a full-fledged and lite
mode. Perfect for grandparents, who want larger-than-life fonts to read
and perform basic cellular and messaging functions. Gramps don’t need
none of the apps nonsense.
The deep level of customisation in MIUI allows you to be
very specific about what an app can or can’t do. Don’t want Facebook to
constantly suck data off your monthly plan? Deny background access to
the app. If the phone gets sluggish, press and hold the menu button,
bring up the task manager and wipe apps off the memory list. Need
WhatsApp to run constantly? Lock it in the task manager. All these nitty
gritty details might seem insignificant. Add them all up, thuough, and
it makes a huge difference to the phone’s performance.
READ MORE: 25 fantastic free Android games
Battery: it keeps going and going
We started the battery abuse with the usual suspects -
WhatsApp, Facebook, web surfing and a few quick calls that didn't
stretch beyond 2 minutes. The considerably low usage was lenient on the
battery, allowing the Redmi to stay alive for 48 hours.
In case you missed it, let us repeat what we said about the battery mileage - 48 hours.
This is by far one of the longest uptimes we’ve seen on an Android phone running on the bare minimum. In comparison, the Moto G can last for a full day, while larger devices with souped-up specs tend to border along the same one-day mileage.
Adding at least 30 minutes of movie playback, Bluetooth
audio streaming and more hours stalking our friends on Facebook brought
the mileage to slightly more than a day. Still decent, and roughly what
the average, conscientious buyer will get, as we were killing apps and
stopping some from running in the background to conserve energy and data
usage.
In our formal test, which loops a 720p video at 50%
brightness and switching between Wi-Fi and 3G mobile data at the halfway
point, the Redmi lasted for 10 hours and 21 minutes.
Your mileage will definitely differ, depending on how
heavily you abuse the battery with apps. On the bright side, you can
purchase additional batteries that are amazingly flat, and an equally
thin battery charger, from its online store.
Verdict
On its home turf of China, Xiaomi already has a
reputation to match the big Android manufacturers. Heck, it's even up
there with Apple.
And outside China it's now scored a big victory in the
budget smartphone category, dealing out an Android 4.2 smartphone for a
mere S$169. Not even the Moto G or the Nokia Lumia 520
come close to the hardware options Xiaomi delivers with the Redmi. And
don’t even get us started on the voodoo that gets two-days of use from
that dinky 2000mAh battery.
For now, it reigns supreme as the best value-for-money
Android smartphone. Given time, Xiaomi could well overshadow the Droid
stalwarts at the other end, too - the flagship Mi3 is about to embark on
a global conquest.
Watch out, Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG and even Google. There's a new badass on your tail, and it’s called Xiaomi.
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