There are absolutely no external differences between the Redmi Note( Review| Photos) and its 4G incarnation. It is simply not possible to physically tell the two apart just by looking at them. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the original looked quite nice and was built well too. The black front face is offset by a shiny white rear shell and very noticeable red icons for the three capacitive buttons below the screen.
The whole look is pretty understated. There’s only a small silver Mi logo on the lower back and no branding on the front. The buttons are lined up on the right edge, while the left is blank. The headset socket is on top and the Micro-USB port is on the bottom. Xiaomi uses a non-standard squared-off Micro-USB port which makes it difficult to see which way the plug needs to go in.
The rear shell is a bit difficult to pry off, but the first major difference between the Xiaomi Note twins is visible beneath it. The 4G version of this phone has only a single regular-sized SIM card slot. You still need to take out the battery in order to swap SIM and microSD cards.
As far as phones with 5.5-inch screens go, the Redmi Note 4G isn’t all that difficult to handle. It’s reasonably wide and tall, but you’ll definitely feel its weight and you’ll have to balance it carefully in order to reach all parts of the screen with one hand.