Xiaomi has set new heights of success with the Redmi series, and it has made it to most of our budget smartphone lists. The new Redmi smartphone will not only intensify competition in the market, but will also be under pressure to live up to its previous variants. And in terms of specifications, it is definitely an upgraded variant. Let’s find out if the new Xiaomi Redmi 4 lives up to the expectations in terms of price or not?
Xiaomi Redmi 4 Design
When we first saw the Redmi 4 in our office, we mistook it for a ‘lite’ or smaller variant of the Redmi 4. The design of both the phones is quite similar. At the Redmi 4 pre-launch event, Xiaomi Product Manager, Jai Mani told Gadgets 360 that the look of the Redmi 4 is inspired by the larger Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (Review). The all-metal rear of the Redmi 4 is polished and makes the phone feel more premium than its predecessor. However, this does make the phone slippery and during our review, we managed to survive a couple of drops while trying to take pictures with the phone.
There hasn’t been much change in the basic formula of the Redmi series. Just like the Redmi 3S, the Redmi 4 has a 5-inch screen. The new model however feels a little thicker at 8.65mm thick and weighs 150 grams. The Redmi 3S had a thickness of 8.5mm and weighed 144 grams. Overall, the Redmi 4 hasn’t changed much despite the increase in thickness or weight as the phone is still comfortable to use with one hand.
We never had any trouble using the fingerprint sensor. The phone has just a Mi logo on the rear, but it says ‘Designed by Xiaomi/Made in India’ in tiny letters. We liked the protective ring around the camera lens.
The power and volume buttons are on the right side of the phone. And they are easily accessible for using the phone with one hand. The phone has a micro-USB port at the bottom for charging and data transfer. There are grilles on the other side, although only one of them is a speaker. There is a 3.5mm audio jack and infrared emitter on the top.
The phone has navigation buttons just below the screen but these are not backlit which means they will be difficult to use in the dark. There is a notification LED just below the home button and it glows to alert users of incoming notifications. Just like other Redmi smartphones, the new Redmi 4 smartphone comes with a dual-SIM tray which means users will be able to use two SIM cards and one SIM card or one microSD card simultaneously. The Redmi 4 smartphone will be available in Champagne Gold and Matte Black colour variants. And we got the Matte Black colour for review.
The retail box with the phone will contain an instruction manual, a data cable, a power adapter, and a SIM projector tool.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 specifications and software
The Xiaomi Redmi 4 features a 5-inch HD (720×1280) IPS display with 2.5D curved-edge glass. This is Xiaomi’s first time using 2.5D glass on a Redmi smartphone under Rs 10,000. The phone packs a 4100mAh non-removable battery. The company also used a battery of the same capacity on the previous Redmi 3S smartphone and this is said to be the biggest highlight of the phone. The phone is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor clocked at 1.4GHz. The Redmi 4 comes in three variants – 2GB RAM/16GB storage, 3GB RAM/32GB storage and 4GB RAM/64GB storage. Our review unit was the 3GB RAM/32GB storage. The storage of Redmi 4 can be expanded up to 128 GB via microSD card.
This phone has a 13-megapixel rear camera with aperture f / 2.0, PDAF and an LED flash. For selfies, the phone has a 5-megapixel front camera with aperture f / 2.2. The new Redmi 4 smartphone will support connectivity features like 4G and VoLTE. If two SIM cards are used simultaneously, only the primary slot will support 4G calls and data while the secondary SIM slot will support 2G only.
The phone runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Xiaomi’s MIUI 8.2 skin on top. This is a stable build that we saw on the Redmi Note 4 and Redmi 4A. This means that the Redmi 4 gets many of the software features that we have already seen. These include Dual Apps, which lets you run two accounts of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp or any other app. One-handed mode lets you shrink the display to one corner, making everything within easy reach. The phone also gets a scrolling screenshot feature that lets you take screenshots of entire web pages. Child mode lets users lock apps, and Second Space lets users create two profiles to keep business and personal data separate on the same device.
The MIUI skin looks cleaner and more polished than the previous version. You can read more about the software in our previous Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 and Xiaomi Redmi 4A reviews.
As compared to previous Redmi phones, the Redmi 4 comes with a number of pre-installed apps like Music, Mi Pics, Mi Community, News, Security, Notes, Recorder and Weather. The Themes app lets users select themes, wallpapers, ringtones and fonts from a store. The device also has a Mi Store app to buy Xiaomi products and accessories. We think the MIUI interface could be lighter if it didn’t have so many apps. But not all of them can be deleted and they take up a lot of storage. The phone also comes with a few third-party apps pre-installed like Amazon, PhonePe Wallet, Flipkart, Facebook and SwiftKey.
Users will get 5GB of free Mi Cloud storage when they sign in with a Mi Account. This storage is different from the 15GB of free cloud storage offered by Google when they sign in to Gmail.
The Redmi 4 smartphone does not run on Android 7.0 Nougat and does not support Google Assistant at the time of review, which disappointed us. By long pressing the home button, a search box based on the Now on Tap feature opens up. Xiaomi says that the Redmi 4 will get an update to Android Nougat. And Google Assistant may be available before that but the company has not promised any date.
xiaomi redmi 4 camera
The 13-megapixel rear camera is quick to focus thanks to the phase detection autofocus feature. The camera app has a face recognition feature that is easy to use. Compared to the Redmi 3S Prime, we found the autofocus on the Redmi 4 to be faster. Photos from the camera are detailed and sharp, while colours are vibrant. Landscape shots are colour accurate most of the time.
However, when the HDR mode is turned on, the photos are captured and processed very slowly and this is our biggest complaint with the device. With the HDR mode on, the user has to keep his hand steady to take a good photo.
There is a lot of noise when taking pictures in low light with the rear camera. Some shots taken in low light turned out to be very poor. At night, the Redmi 4 takes good pictures but only when the subject has good lighting.
The camera app of Redmi 4 is simple and easy to use. The app has many settings and features. HDR mode launches with just one tap. The phone has live filters. The phone can record videos up to 720 pixels and 1080 pixels and the video quality is also excellent.
The selfies taken by Redmi 4 are decent. But the image processing is slow. In our desire to take a quick selfie, we ended up taking blurry selfies many times.
Overall, the camera on the Xiaomi Redmi 4 is better than the Redmi 3S Prime (Review) in terms of focus and performance. The camera has issues like poor quality in low light and slow processing in HDR mode. We hope these issues are resolved with an update.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 Performance
The overall performance of the Xiaomi Redmi 4 was excellent and the device handled most tasks with ease. The MIUI interface sometimes feels sluggish but app performance is not affected by it. We played games like Asphalt 8 and Cut the Rope 2 on the phone with ease. During the review, we did not notice any major issues with the phone. Nor did the phone overheat.
We reviewed the 3GB RAM unit and found only 1.2GB of free memory. This means that the 2GB variant of the Xiaomi Redmi 4 may have trouble multitasking. We did not notice any slowdowns even with around 1GB of free memory. But we would recommend you to spend a little more and get the 4GB RAM variant.
The voice quality on the phone was excellent and the phone supports VoLTE. The phone does not come with a headset so we tested it with our earphones and the sound quality we got impressed.
The 5-inch IPS display is bright and text looks sharp. The screen is crisp and has great viewing angles. However, this is not the best HD display we have seen on a Redmi phone. Colour reproduction is good but we would recommend the Redmi 3S in this regard. The screen is readable and usable even in direct sunlight. Watching movies and playing games is a good experience with the 5-inch display. The phone has a reading mode.
The phone scored well in benchmark testing. We got results similar to those of smartphones powered by Snapdragon 430 processor.
The Redmi 4 smartphone’s battery lasted for 14 hours and 20 minutes in our HD video loop test, which is good. We would give credit to the low-HD resolution screen for the performance in the battery loop test. With regular use, the battery lasted for a full day. The phone has a power saving mode that helps the phone run longer on a single charge. The phone does not come with a fast charging adapter, but Xiaomi’s Jai Mani told us that the phone supports fast charging. We expect Xiaomi to sell a fast charging adapter for the Redmi 4 as an additional accessory, or you can buy it from a third party.
Our verdict
In the past too, Xiaomi’s Redmi smartphones have set the standard for other smartphones in this price segment. And the Redmi series showcased the potential of a budget smartphone. The same is true for the Redmi 4. Xiaomi’s latest entry level Redmi is a perfect package in terms of performance, battery life and design. Camera quality is one area where the phone disappoints, but it is useless to expect too much from a phone of this price.
The Xiaomi Redmi 4 will replace the Redmi 3S (and Redmi 3S Prime) in due course and will be the flagship phone in the sub-Rs 10,000 category. The company has priced the 2GB RAM/16GB storage variant at Rs 6,999, the 3GB RAM/32GB storage variant at Rs 8,999 and the 4GB RAM/64GB storage variant at Rs 10,999. In the middle variant, we always found 1.28GB of free memory. We would recommend people to buy the slightly more expensive variant with more storage. The Redmi 4 will compete with the Samsung Galaxy J2 (2016), Lenovo K6 Power (Review), Oppo A37. But the biggest challenger to it will be Xiaomi’s own Redmi Note 4, which has a better processor, bigger screen and a better camera.
Availability of these smartphones is a big issue. Previous Redmi 3S (Redmi 3S Prime), Redmi 4A and Redmi Note 4 smartphones have been extremely difficult to buy in stock. While these smartphones have been sold on Flipkart and the company’s Mi online store.
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