Ever since its entry to the Indian market, Xiaomi and its products have been the talk of the town. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer couldn’t have asked for a better start with the company managing to sell more than 1 million units in just a few months from the time they began their operations.
The latest war horse from Xiaomi is the Redmi Note 4G. As the name suggests the Note 4G is basically the LTE variant of the original Redmi Note. However, the company has changed the processor of the device and has gone with a Qualcomm chipset for the 4G variant. Since there’s a significant change under-the-hood, we decided to take the device for a spin and check if it’s any different from the original MediaTek model.
Unboxing
Just like most of the Xiaomi smartphones, the Redmi Note 4G also comes with an eco-friendly packaging. The retail box is very minimalistic and has a natural simple look.
Opening the package, you are welcomed by the phablet itself and if you dig deeper you will find some paperwork, A/C adapter, microUSB cable and a battery.
We had recorded the unboxing of the original Redmi Note and you can find the video below. Mind you, the package of the 4G variant isn’t any different.
Design
Affordability and great looks never go hand in hand. That’s the case with the Redmi Note 4G as well. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G carries a design language which is very similar to that of the Redmi 1S.
Considering the price tag of the device, one cannot really expect a high quality build – we are not talking about the craftsmanship, but rather about the choice of materials used in the overall construction. For example, the rear panel is made of glossy plastic which is prone to fingerprints and smudges.
The front is all black and there’s a touch of red on the capacitive touch buttons – which manages to capture your attention the moment you pick up the device. The display on the Redmi Note 4G doesn’t come with any protection layers such as Gorilla Glass or Dragontrail – So much unlike Xiaomi, right?
At 185 grams, the Redmi Note 4G is on the heavier side of things by today’s standards, but again the weight also contributes to the solid feel in the hands. However, the phone is still slippery, thanks to the glossy plastic rear panel.
Just like its 3G bother, the 4G version also measure 154 x 78.7 x 9.45mm.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G’s front is dominated by a 5.5-inch IPS display and as mentioned before, there are three capacitive touch buttons with a touch of red – menu, home and back keys, below the display. Furthermore, you will find the earpiece, an array of sensors and the 5 megapixel front facing camera.
Xiaomi hasn’t placed any physical buttons on the left side of the Redmi Note. The power key and the volume rockers are located on the right side of the phablet and they offer good feedback.
The microUSB 2.0 port and the primary microphone pinhole are located at the bottom. The 3.5mm audio jack and the secondary microphone, which is used for active noise cancellation is found at the top.
Moving on to the rear, there’s a 13 megapixel camera with LED flash at top centre of the panel. The loud speaker grille is placed at the bottom left corner. We would like to bring it to your notice that the camera module does protrude a bit, but the projection is only about a millimetre.
The back panel of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G is removable and you can even replace the 3,200mAh battery if required. Underneath the back lie the SIM card slot and the microSD card slot. While the original 3G variant supports dual-SIM beds, the 4G model comes with only one bed.
Display
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G sports a 5.5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels and accounts to a pixel density of 267 pixel per inch. Unfortunately, the front panel does not come with any special protection layers and is prone for minor scratches and sniffs. This also means that you should be little careful while handling the Redmi Note.
The display on the Redmi Note 4G offers great colors, but the contrast when compared with the Redmi 1s is a bit on the lower side. The difference however is visible only in the low-lighting conditions.
Sunlight legibility of the Redmi Note 4G is quite good as the panel is less reflective than that on the Redmi 1s. The color reproduction is quite impressive when the ambient light increases.
We would like to bring it to your notice that Xiaomi has loaded some software features to the Redmi Note that offers you an option to prevent pocket dials. The option if enabled will allow users to unlock the screen only when the proximity sensor is not covered.
User Interface
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and comes with the home backed MIUI v5 layer. The company’s proprietary user interface is quite famous back in its home land and is gaining popularity in India as well.
We are quite disappointed by the fact that the device comes out of the box with dated Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, but the good news is the company has already announced the new Android 4.4 KitKat based MIUI v6 for Redmi Note. The newest version of MIUI brings a whole new visual interface, animations and updated system applications among other things.
For now, let’s focus on MIUI v5 that comes on board the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G. The home screen has four customizable shortcuts docked by default, but you can add one more item and make it five. As usual, there’s no app drawer, which means that any application that you install will be placed in the home screen. Don’t worry, you can have unlimited panes.
As one can expect, the UI comes with some pre-installed apps. One of the interesting bits is the Theme app, which allows you to customize your smartphone the way you need. You can change themes and in turn have a new home screen, wallpaper, lock screen style, system icons, system fonts and even the sound profile.
Another application that manages to attract eyeballs is the feature-rich MIUI browser. The web surfing tool is swift and has built in reading mode, which enlarges the text font, removing the unnecessary elements on the page. The browser also has the ability to sync with Google accounts and it does support downloads.
The last bit in this section is about the security app that comes with MIUI v5. The app is quite handy and is capable of scanning the phone for malware, manage blocklist, restrict data usage, configure battery management, clear RAM and also manage permissions of all the installed apps.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G comes with 8GB of on board storage out of which about 6GB is usable. And, at boot up about 1.3GB of RAM is available.
Performance
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset with a quad-core 1.6GHz CPU and Adreno 305 GPU. The processor is what that differs the Note 4G and the original Note.
Just to refresh your memory, the original Redmi Note model comes with a MediaTek MT6592 chipset with an octa-core 1.6GHz CPU and Mali 450-MP4 GPU. The RAM, however remains same on both the variants – 2GB.
The basic point of this review was to find out if a new chipset in the 4G model brings any difference (except for the connectivity radios) in the overall performance. Since, the whole prospective of this story lies on the how well the device performs – we did not wanted to take any chance while gauging it.
So, we decided to run benchmarks and scientifically evaluate the performance of the Redmi Note 4G and stack it up against its MediaTek brother.
The first test was the AnTuTu benchmarking that reveals the overall performance of the phablet. The MediaTek variant managed to score about 9,000 more points than what the Snapdragon model managed. Surprising, isn’t?
We up the ante with the Linpack test, which measures the multi-threaded oriented benchmarking of the phablet. Again, the original Redmi Note stood out.
Next up, we had the GPU of the Redmi Note 4G sweating it out. The NenaMark 2 benchmarking application gave us a conclusive evidence of which of the two – Adreno 305 or Mali 450 MP4 GPU is superior.
The last test that was performed on the Redmi Note 4G, before we concluded was the Vellamo benchmarking. This app helps us analyse the browsing performance of the smartphone. For much of our surprise, the 4G variant again fails to match the performance of its 3G sibling.
Camera
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G is equipped with a 13 megapixel rear camera and has LED flash. The camera module does protrude a bit, but that’s defiantly negligible.
The camera user interface on the Redmi Note 4G is quite simple and navigation is not cause of concern. There are two bars – left and right. The latter features the settings toggle, the camera shutter and the gallery shortcut, while the former sports the front camera button, shutter switch and flash settings.
The other options available for you to tweak with are the scenes, HDR, focus mode, white balance, exposure, face detection and ISO manual settings.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G’s camera manages to capture images with great amount of detail, but we are quite unhappy with its noise levels. The camera rendering is slightly oversaturated, but that doesn’t hamper the final result by much.
You can also shoot images using the HDR mode, which adds up extra detail in both the highlights as well as the shadows. The camera is also capable of shooting Panorama in both landscape and portrait options.
The panoramas take a while before they are fully stitched. The landscape shots come out with a resolution of 2300 x 400 pixels, while the portrait images are in 3000 x 800 pixels resolution.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G can record videos at 1080p@30fps. The audio is captured at 128 Kbps with 2 channels and the bitrate of the samples is 17 Mbps. The detail levels in the Full HD videos are par for the course and color reproduction is good.
Connectivity
The main selling point of the Redmi Note 4G is its LTE capabilities. The device supports dual band LTE network and is tuned to work with Indian bands – TDD 2300MHz and FDD 1800MHz.
Unlike the 3G variant, the Redmi Note 4G is a single SIM unit. The connectivity options for the phablet includes Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP and LE, A-GPS, GLONASS and FM radio.
We put the 4G modem on the Redmi Note 4G through the paces in order to test what LTE speed the smartphone can achieve. We record one of the trails to show it to you all – check it out below.
Battery
One of the most important aspects of a mobile device is its battery performance. Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G comes with a relatively big 3,100mAh battery, which ideally should provide long hours of usage.
Our battery test reveals that the smartphone can last up to 9 hours and 16 minutes before it dies on you. You can check out our detailed battery life test story to know more about how the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G performs in individual tests like call, 3G, Wi-Fi and Video playback.
Conclusion
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G is already available in the market for a price tag of INR 9,999. The phablet is undoubtedly one of the most affordable 4G LTE offerings out there.
To be honest, we are quite surprised to know that Xiaomi hasn’t managed to make the most out of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset. The performance is surely not on par with the original MediaTek model, but is it a trade-off for the additional radios on board? Well, we hope that’s not the case.
While the Redmi Note 4G may not be as solid as its 3G sibling, the device is clearly one of the best when you compare it with its competition. After all, it’s very hard to beat Xiaomi when it comes to pricing.
The real competition for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G is the recently launched Yu Yureka and the Lenovo A6000. Both the smartphones support 4G LTE network in India and they are also equipped with superior hardware configuration. At the moment, all the three devices have managed to attract a lot of attraction and it will be very interesting to see which of these smartphones can win the hearts of the masses.
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