The company’s statement may prove to be true, as the Redmi 2 (and Redmi 2 Prime) launched in 2015 and the Redmi 3S (Redmi 3S Prime) launched in 2016 were also successful phones. These smartphones have consistently been included in our list of best smartphones under Rs 10,000.
2017 has been a successful year for Xiaomi, with the company claiming to have sold over 1 million units of the Redmi Note 4 within 15 days of its launch. The Chinese company hopes to maintain this growth with the new Redmi 4A. This phone has features like VoLTE and 13 megapixel rear camera. Will the new Redmi 4A be able to write a new chapter of success for the company? Let’s find out in the review.
Xiaomi Redmi 4A Design
When you take Xiaomi Redmi 4A in your hands for the first time, you will feel that it is made of metal body. Whereas its body is made of polycarbonate. There is a separate segment on the top of the rear panel and antenna bands are at the bottom like the Redmi models with metal body.
The new smartphone has a design that is quite similar to the previous Redmi phones. And customers in this price segment will not be disappointed. With a 5-inch screen, the Redmi 4A is a compact phone and is easy to use with one hand. The volume rocker and power button are on the right side while the hybrid SIM slot is on the left. There is a charging point at the bottom and a 3.5mm radio jack and infrared emitter at the top.
Looking at the rear, the phone looks like the Redmi 3S. There is Mi branding and speaker grill on the rear, which are similar to the Redmi 3S. The Redmi 4A does not have a fingerprint sensor and it is not surprising that it does not have one at this price.
The phone has slightly curved edges, although we prefer the overall shape of the Redmi 3S as in our experience it is more curved and fits better in the hand. The edges of the Redmi 4A are only slightly curved. However, the rear panel of the phone comes with a matte finish and its grip is good.
Weighing 132 grams, the Redmi 4A is lighter than the Redmi 3S which weighs 144 grams. At the time of its India launch, Xiaomi announced that the Redmi 4A is the ‘lightest Redmi ever’. Notably, both models measure 8.5mm in thickness. The Redmi 4A is available in Dark Grey, Gold, and Rose Gold colour variants. We received a Dark Grey unit for review.
The Xiaomi Redmi 4A comes with a charger, micro-USB cable, warranty card, user guide and a SIM ejector tool. Like other Xiaomi products, the Redmi 4A retail box does not include a headset, which may disappoint some users. The retail box also comes with a ‘Made in India’ tag. At the launch event, the company said that 95 percent of Xiaomi phones are now manufactured in India.
Xiaomi Redmi 4A specifications and software
The Redmi 4A sports a 5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) display with a pixel density of 296ppi. The display is decent and the colour reproduction is also good. We had no issues using the phone under direct sunlight. Text and images looked sharp while videos looked good. The Redmi 4A comes with a reading mode that makes colours easier on the eyes and the colour temperature can also be adjusted from the Settings app.
This smartphone has a quad-core Snapdragon 425 processor which runs at 1.4 GHz. Adreno 308 is integrated for graphics. It has 2 GB RAM and 16 GB inbuilt storage which can be expanded up to 128 GB via microSD card. This handset has a 3120 mAh non-removable battery. The company has claimed a standby time of up to seven days. Apart from 4G VoLTE, the Redmi 4S smartphone has features like Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, GPS / A-GPS and GLONASS.
With a hybrid SIM slot, users can use one micro SIM and one nano SIM or one microSD card at a time. When using two SIM cards, the first slot supports 4G calls and data while the second SIM supports 2G network. The phone has gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor.
The Redmi 4A runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow based MIUI 8. During the launch, the company emphasized that many features in the phone have been designed specifically keeping Indian users in mind. MIUI 13 supports Indic languages, including Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali.
On the software front, the phone comes with many of the features seen in previous Redmi phones. These include a Dual App feature that allows users to sign in to two different accounts (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook) in a single app on the device. Second Space lets users keep business and personal data separate on a single phone. Second Space lets users sign in to two different Google accounts.
In Redmi 4A, users can take screenshots by scrolling, for example, you can also save web pages that do not fit on the screen. Apart from this, there are some other MIUI features like Child Mode for app locking, Quick Ball button for quick shortcuts and One-handed mode to shrink the screen to one corner.
The dialer app in MIUI 8 has also been improved and shows caller ID by default. The Mi Cover app is also worth mentioning as it lets you transfer data to another Mi phone. The phone also has a theme app that lets you choose from a wide collection of wallpapers, ringtones and fonts. The phone also comes with a number of pre-installed apps like Scanner, Mi Community and Mi Pics. The Redmi 4A comes with pre-installed apps like Facebook, Amazon Kindle, WPS Office, MakeMyTrip and Flipkart.
During the India launch, Xiaomi also previewed a redesigned messaging app that will make IRCTC train tickets appear differently on the screen. That is, when you get a confirmation message from IRCTC, Xiaomi MIUI 8 will recognise it and show it as a real ticket.
Xiaomi Redmi 4A Camera Performance
Redmi 4A has a 13-megapixel rear camera with 5-element lens and aperture F / 2.2. It has LED flash and it also has modes like HDR, Panorama, Burst Mode and Face Recognition. Apart from this, there are many real-time filters. The phone has a 5-megapixel front camera with aperture F / 2.2. The phone has the option of 1080 pixels and 720 pixels video recording at 30 frames per second.
The phone’s main camera takes good photos and the colours are also excellent in good light. Photos taken in daylight came with good detail. We were able to focus on objects easily, but we noticed that the camera had trouble taking close-up shots. Some of the photos we took with the Redmi 4A had a lot of noise.
The rear camera of Xiaomi Redmi 4A does not work well in artificial light. And noise is visible in the pictures. Pictures taken in low light come with good detail, although they look scattered. Selfies coming from the front camera are sharp and detailed enough to be shared on social platforms. The quality is a bit poor in low light. The phone can record 1080p videos and the quality is also good. The camera app is easy to use and we liked the one-tap access to modes.
Xiaomi Redmi 4A Performance
The overall performance of the Redmi 4A impressed us. There was no lag while multitasking and we could switch between multiple apps with ease. We enjoyed streaming videos and watching movies on the Redmi 4A. But we do admit that the 5-inch screen feels small as we are used to using bigger phones.
Gaming on the Redmi 4A was also a good experience and we played games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Effect 2 with ease. Initially, the games did hang when we launched them as there were many apps running in the background. During our review, we saw around 900MB of free memory at all times and we feel that more RAM would have been nice.
Redmi 4A has 16 GB of storage out of which 10 GB is user-friendly. And this means that we will have to rely on expandable storage. With the infrared emitter given in Redmi 4A, many appliances like TV and set-top box can be controlled at home and office.
The sound output from the handset’s loudspeaker is good enough for a small room. And at this price, you can’t expect much more sound. The unit doesn’t come with earphones, so we tested the audio quality with our own earphones, which were excellent. Xiaomi has provided a number of audio options in the Settings app.
This phone supports many popular audio formats like HEVC and MPEG4. Apart from these, there are also PCM, AAC/EAAC+, MP3, FLAC and WAV.
The Xiaomi Redmi 4A supports VoLTE and we did not face any network issues even in areas with weak signals. The call quality was excellent. We did not notice any overheating issues during our review.
The Redmi 4A scored respectably in benchmark tests. The phone packs a 3120mAh battery that lasted 12 hours and 35 minutes in our video loop test. During normal usage, the Redmi 4A proved to be a powerhouse and lasted a full day. Notably, this was without using the power saver mode.
We used the power saver mode when the battery of Redmi 4A was 20 percent and after this we got 8 hours of battery life. The phone does not have fast charging support and this is not an issue for those buying a smartphone at this price.
Our verdict
The new Redmi 4A has certainly set new benchmarks in this price segment and is expected to be a very popular phone. Priced at Rs 5,999, the Redmi 4A has a lot of useful features like VoLTE. The camera performance is excellent and the polycarbonate body, 3120mAh battery and software are also satisfactory.
It will be interesting to see how the Redmi 4A smartphone performs compared to the Redmi 3S priced at Rs 6,999. By paying Rs 1,000 more, users can get a metal body, better Snapdragon 430 processor and more battery power if they buy the Redmi 3S.
The Redmi 4A seems to be aimed at first-time smartphone users and could be a great option for such users.
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