Xiaomi India is unstoppable at the moment as the company has silently teased a new smartphone's launch on March 14. Earlier today, the Chinese company announced two new affordable TVs for the Indian consumers and at the end of the live stream video, Xiaomi displayed a smartphone touting it as coming on March 14. While Xiaomi did not mention anything about the device, it's heavily expected the company will bring the budget Xiaomi Redmi 5 smartphone to the Indian market, and replace it with India' second-best selling smartphone of 2017, the Xiaomi Redmi 4. For the unaware, the Xiaomi Redmi 5 was launched back in China in December 2017 with decent hardware on board.
Alongside the Redmi 5, Xiaomi also unveiled the Redmi 5 Plus smartphone which was launched in India last month as the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5. The Redmi 5, on the other hand, offers downgraded hardware than the Redmi Note 5/ Redmi 5 Plus.
The Redmi 5 has a 5.7-inch display with a resolution of 720 x 1440 pixels, and it's an 18:9 panel. The design of the Redmi 5 is almost similar to that of the Redmi Note 5. But most of the changes can be seen under the hood as the Redmi 5 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chipset. The phone comes in multiple variants with 2GB/3GB/4GB of RAM and up to 32GB of internal storage with support for a microSD card. Xiaomi very recently launched the Redmi 5 with 4GB of RAM in China
Optics wise, the Redmi 5 rocks a 12MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture, PDAF and LED flash. To the front, Xiaomi has added a 5MP camera, and thankfully, it also has support for an LED flash. Below the rear camera, there's a fingerprint scanner, and to the top, there's an IR Blaster.
The Redmi 5 offers connectivity options such as 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, and a micro USB port. The device measures 7.7mm in thickness and weighs 157grams. The device boots Android 7.1.1 Nougat based MIUI 9 ROM out of the box.
The possible letdown of the Redmi 5 is the battery capacity as it has a 3300mAh cell inside. However, the power-efficient Snapdragon 450 SoC will deliver the same performance as the 4100mAh battery unit seen on the Redmi 4.
As of now, we do not have any details about the price of the Redmi 5 nor any other details. But Xiaomi is expected to launch the phone at a starting price of Rs 6,999 like the Redmi 4 and Redmi 3s devices.
