Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 – leak discussion!

Introduction

The Apple of China or so it is called, Xiaomi certainly has a great reputation among gadget lovers and tech enthusiasts alike. They make a very wide range of products that every household uses on a daily basis. In fact, Xiaomi is one of the few companies that have really taken a huge step towards the whole Internet of Things (IOT) direction as stated by Xiaomi Vice President and Product Spokesperson Hugo Barra during the launch of the MiMiXX 2 event previously this year. So it should come as no surprise that Xiaomi has a very good reputation as a product company that encourages innovation and forward thinking.

Xiaomi has certainly made tides in the Indian market with their smartphones, although they shouldn’t be reluctant to launch their entire line of products here. But their smartphones certainly make for very good purchases for any budget. Xiaomi was one of the first companies to launch budget phablets in the Indian marketspace and they continue to follow tradition with their Redmi Note series of phones. The current gen Xiaomi Redmi 4 is a great device in its own right and it is even advertised as India’s No.1 selling smartphone but as with everything, Xiaomi decided to move forward with updating the device to match its contenders from late this year. So let’s hop straight into the XiaomiRedmi Note 5 pre-review.

Design and Display:

Even though the device hasn’t officially launched yet, the internet was kind enough to provide us with some leaks of the upcoming Xiaomi device and we can clearly see what Xiaomi did with the device to upgrade it for 2018. The device that is leaked could either be the Redmi Pro 2 or the Redmi Note 5 but all hints now points towards the latter. The device is seen to feature a bear bezel less design but the execution seems questionable as the screen is fully rectangle but the overall shape of the device is a bit rounded off. We suspect that this won’t be the final design and it is likely a prototype device. Topping it off, the rear has housings for a dual camera setup and a fingerprint sensor.

Leaks indicate that the display on the Redmi Note 5 will have an 18:9 aspect ratio and a bumped up screen size of 6 inches, up from the 5.5 inch of the previous Redmi Note 5. While the screen size may get a boost, if the leaks are true, then the overall volume of the phone will remain largely same because of the thin bezels. And as with bezel less display’s, the device will probably not have the usual touch sensitive buttons like the previous Redmi devices but will rather have on screen home buttons which is fine by me.

Performance:

All the current leaks and reports indicate that the Redmi Note 5 will feature either the Snapdragon 660 or MediaTekHelio P25 SoC. I hope that it’s the latter because Mediatek is now plagued with CPU’s sticking to last generation fabrication processes which are neither efficient, nor very powerful and heats under load. The Snapdragon 660 on the other hand is a much newer SoC and is based on Snapdragon’s own design and as we have seen with a few other devices, the Snapdragon 660 also has incredible performance. There will likely be three variants of the RN5, each with different RAM and storage configurations. But currently speculations indicate that there will be two variants with 3GB of RAM and another with 4GB of RAM.

Software:

So, Google finally debuted the launch of Android 8 Oreo with its Pixel 2 line-up. If we know anything about Xiaomi then it is this, they do provide important security update and patches for their devices. And as a result we suspect that the Redmi Note 5 will likely ship with the customised flavour of Android 8 with their proprietary MiUi skin layered on top. And even if they don’t, it’ll likely feature the older Android 7.1.1 version and will likely be updated to Oreo in due time.

Camera and Storage:

Up until this point, we have been led to believe that that the upcoming Redmi Note5 will likely be shipped with dual camera at the rear with a one of them housing a 16MP sensor and a secondary 5MP sensor. Generally speaking, budget dual camera setups aren’t that great so if somehow Xiaomi manages to match it with at least the quality of the Mi A1, it would be fantastic. The exact sensor model details aren’t available nor are the front camera details at the moment but the launch of the device isn’t very far.

Storage wise, reports suggests that the Redmi Note 5 will likely ship with 16/32 and 64 GB of storage across three models. It’ll also likely have support for expandable storage which like always should be accessible through the Hybrid sim slot Xiaomi is known to implement.

Battery and Connectivity:

Battery wise, the previous Redmi note 4 shipped with a 4100mAh battery which was very adequate for its specifications and the Redmi Note 5 is also reported to feature a battery around the same capacity which should be adequate to get it through the day with moderate usage.

The Redmi Note 5 is primarily aimed at developing markets that includes its long term market India so it is safe to speculate at this point that it’ll have support for Indian network bands. It’ll also have support for Wi-Fi 802.11, a/ac/b/g/n/n 5GHz, MIMO, Bluetooth v4.2 and GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS support.

Conclusion:

Xiaomi is prepping for a tough battle among smartphone manufacturers for 2018 and the current leak is already making a strong case for the Redmi Note 5. We certainly hope that the final device will stay close to what the leaks has led us to believe. The XiaomiRedmi Note 5price is speculated to be around Rs.12990 for the top end model which would be a fantastic value proposition. Overall, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is a device to look forward to for the start of 2018 for around a budget of Rs.15000.