Xiaomi is known as the budget friendly phone manufacturer whereas it was earlier widely know as the Apple of China. The software on MI phones still looks like iOS but from the hardware perspective, the company is looking for it’s own path. For example, the MI Max, the bezel-less phone is an interesting piece of hardware, it’s adding some masala to the boring smartphone design (git’s more than design).
But the company hasn’t forgotten about the phone line which has contributed to it’s success – the Redmi. Android Headlines says that Xiaomi has confirmed that the successor to the line will be released on 4th of November in China. It will most probably be named Redmi 4. The release of Redmi 4 on November 4th? Nice.
The Redmi devices offer a great spec phone at a very affordable price. Well, they are not perfect, the specifications might say a high megapixel camera but it won’t be matching the quality of the iPhone or the Google Pixel if they sport the same megapixel count. I’m saying this because many people don’t know that and they think “whoa, this phone might capture some great shots. Why should I even buy an iPhone!”. The premium segment of phones is not to be compared head-to-head with the affordable phones.
That’s not to say the camera on the Redmi phones is bad, actually, they are pretty decent for the price. I used Redmi 1S for months at the time of release and the camera was pretty awesome during that period at that price. But I hated the layer of MI on top of Android, it slows the phone down significantly. I don’t know how the latest versions of MIUI perform but back then it was pretty horrible. All I had to do was install CyanogenMod and the phone was pretty perfect.
Redmi 3S was released earlier this year and the next phone is almost here. The thing I hated about the 3S was the design and construction – the boring metal body and gold colour option. Every smartphone manufacturer is making metal body phones and I’m bored of them already. But this time around the Redmi 4 seems to be using a different design language – something on the lines of OnePlus X (you can see the image on top teased by Xiaomi) with a metal frame and shiny black body.
Previous Redmi phones were prone to heating when talking on the phone, gaming, browsing or basically anything. I hope Xiaomi figures out a way to not include this problem with the Redmi 4 this time around.
It’s coming out on 4th, let’s see if Xiaomi can fix the problems the previous Redmi phones had and if it can make the budget-friendly phones a little more exciting rather than just bumping the spec sheet.