Most Chinese smartphone brands follow different policies for their home market and for markets like India. They change the name of the device and on many occasions, even the processor is replaced when launched outside China. Xiaomi, for example, launched its latest budget segment phones Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus in China, but in India, it has launched the latter as the Redmi Note 5. Now the company is sending out teasers ahead of the release of the Redmi 5 smartphone, for the Indian market, on March 14.
From the teaser messages on social media and the phone being described as a “Compact Powerhouse” by Xiaomi, one is expecting that the phone to be released on March 14 will be the Redmi 5 and it may sport a powerful battery.
The specifications of the Xiaomi Redmi 5 as launched in China in December last has a metal unibody design with a display of 5.7-inch with a screen resolution of 720 x 1440 pixels (HD+). The Redmi 5 comes with a full screen display having an aspect ratio of 18:9.
Being a budget category phone Xiaomi offers this phone with the older version 7.1.2 of the Android Nougat OS and with the inhouse MIUI 9.1 skin riding over it. The phone is sold in 2 variants, 2GB RAM and 32GB storage and 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 SoC is the processor. Its an octa-core processor clocking a speed of 1.8GHz. The new Xiaomi Redmi 5 comes fitted with the Adreno 506 GPU for rendering graphics.
The camera section of this phone has a 12MP sensor in the rear and a 5MP sensor in the front. The fingerprint sensor is provided in the rear panel. A 3300mAh battery rounds off the major hardware and the other provisions like sensors and communications suite are adequately taken care of for a device in this segment. It is still not clear if the Redmi 5 will be released in India in all 4 colors, Black, Gold, Light Blue and Rose Gold that it is sold in China in.
With the 3GB/32GB variant of the larger Redmi Note 5 being sold in India at Rs 9,999 it is not clear what price the Redmi 5 will be launched at.
One will have to wait till March 14 to know the rest of the details.