Xiaomi’s Redmi series has been wildly popular over the past few years and for good reason. The low prices and good features have really set these models apart, and even other Chinese players have found them hard to compete with. Thanks to this competition, you can get a lot more in a budget or even mid-range smartphone than you used to be able to a few years ago.
The two biggest competitors for the Redmi Note 3 that immediately spring to mind are the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note and LeEco’s Le 1s. Can Xiaomi’s latest offering become the undisputed winner in the sub-Rs.15, 000 segment. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 might be a budget smartphone but there’s certainly nothing low-end about the hardware it packs. This is the first phone to roll out with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 650 SoC, which is a pretty big deal given its near-flagship level performance in some benchmarks.
It’s a hexa-core SoC, much like the Snapdragon 808 found in the Moto X Style, but instead of the Cortex-A57 cores, we have two of ARM’s more powerful Cortex-A72 cores running at 1.8GHz. The other four cores are Coretx-A53s which chug along at 1.4GHz. This SoC still uses the 28nm fabrication process but the GPU is a newer Adreno 510, which is one notch lower than what’s present in the flagship Snapdragon 820 chip. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 will come in two variants.
What we have today is the one with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, but you can opt for the other model with 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage if your budget is tight. Storage can be expanded by up to 32GB by using a microSD card instead of a second SIM in the hybrid slot. This isn’t much when you consider that most phones today support 128GB or more.
Thanks to the Qualcomm chip, the phone features Category 7 LTE for Band 3, 5, 40 and 41 along with VoLTE support. You also get dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooh 4.1, USB OTG, FM radio, Miracast, GLONASS, and BeiDou. NFC is one feature that’s missing. A few kinks aside, we believe that the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is easily one of the best smartphones available for under Rs.15, 000 today, and has the potential to get better with future software updates. If you are confused between this and the Le 1s, we can confidently give the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 our vote.