Xiaomi recently launched the Redmi Note 10 series in India, but it doesn’t come with 5G support. The series features three 4G devices, two of which (Redmi Note 10 Pro Max and Redmi Note 10 Pro) are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G SoC and one (Redmi Note 10) is powered by the Snapdragon 678 SoC. All the devices will come running on MIUI 12 based on Android 11 out of the box and are slated to receive the MIUI 12.5 update very soon. Many smartphone users believe there should have been 5G support on the device; let’s talk about this some more.
Would 5G Support Have Mattered on the Redmi Note 10 Series?
While many believe that Redmi Note 10 series is a little less attractive because of the lack of 5G support, it wouldn’t have made a difference even if 5G was there.
Commercial 5G network rollout has still not happened. Looking at the speculations, the spectrum auction of 5G airwaves might not take place for another next 6 months at least. Even the telcos have not tested 5G with airwaves in the 3300 MHz - 3600 MHz bands.
Overall, it might take more than a year at least for 5G to be deployed commercially throughout India. On top of that, the telcos might go for a soft launch of 5G in select metro cities, so it wouldn’t be unfair to assume that a pan-India rollout of 5G will take at least two years.
Looking at this time frame, the Redmi Note 10 series missing out on 5G isn’t really that bad. Since it is a mid-range device and a majority of users switch to another mid-range device in 18 months or 24 months ( 2-years), it wouldn’t have mattered even if it was a 5G device.
Users can buy another mid-range 5G device in the next two to three years, and then keeping a 5G device would actually matter.
