With the Redmi Note 3, Xiaomi too joins the club of affordably priced handsets with a metal body. A quick look around the handset shows that the improvement in materials was definitely the focus point. Visual flourishes have been kept to a minimum and it’s quite apparent that the design team was mostly focused on the upcoming Mi5 rather than the Redmi Note 3.The front of the phone is the relatively plain and generic looking. That’s not to say that this is a bad-looking phone of course. Gone are the massive bezels, a raised edge runs all the way around the face of the phone which should offer a bit of protection when placing it face down. This last bit is particularly important since the handset does not ship with Gorilla Glass protection. Beyond that, you’ll notice three backlit capacitive buttons that correspond to the usual menu, home and back keys. Up above the 5.5 inch display is the earpiece, proximity sensor and front facing camera. A notification LED is also discretely embedded here and is visible only when illuminated.As mentioned earlier, the display is flanked by a raised edge on all sides. Gently curved, it doesn’t dig into your thumb as you flick around stuff on the screen. The right side sports the volume rocker while below it is the power key. Both the buttons offer fantastic tactile feedback. Switch over to the left hand side and you’ll notice that single tray that houses both the SIM card slots. You can either place two nano SIM cards here or switch out one SIM for a microSD card. The top edge of the phone sports the 3.5mm audio jack as well as an iR blaster while the microUSB port lies at the bottom.