In a move to take advantage of the ongoing festive season in India, Xiaomi has launched yet another budget 4G smartphone, dubbed as the Redmi 3S Plus. It is a new variant of the recently launched Redmi 3S, and surprisingly it will be up for offline sale only. The specifications of the Redmi 3S+ are similar to the Redmi 3S Prime, except for the RAM capacity, this one comes with 2GB of RAM.
The Redmi 3s Plus is priced at Rs 9,499 and is now available through more than 7,500 offline stores in Dark Grey, Silver, and Gold color options. Some of the known stores that will be selling the device are Poorvika, Sangeetha, BIG C, and LOT mobiles, through Xiaomi’s distributors such as Innocomm, Redington, and Just Buy Live.
The Redmi 3S Plus comes with a 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display. It is powered by a 1.4GHz Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 chipset clubbed with Adreno 505 GPU. The device features 32GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 128GB via microSD card. There is a 13-megapixel primary camera onboard with features such as PDAF, LED Flash, f/2.0 aperture, 1080p video recording, along with a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The smartphone also has a fingerprint sensor on the rear, and is backed by a 4100mAh battery.
On the software front, the Redmi 3S Plus runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow-based MIUI. The device supports connectivity options such as dual-SIM, 4G with VoLTE (Voice Over LTE), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and GPS + GLONASS. Going by the specifications and pricing, the device seems to compete with the Coolpad Note 3 Plus and Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus.
For comparison, the Redmi 3s Plus comes powered by Snapdragon 430 octa-core chipset clubbed with 2GB of RAM while the Vibe K5 Plus is powered by Snapdragon 616 octa-core processor clubbed with 3GB of RAM. The Coolpad Note 3 Plus on the other hand, features MediaTek MT675 chipset paired with 3GB of RAM. It is noteworthy to point out that the competing smartphones come with full HD displays while the Redmi 3S Plus lurks at HD 720p display. Also, the Vibe K5 Plus is currently retailing at Rs. 7,499 on Flipkart while the Coolpad Note 3 Plus can be bought at Rs. 8,499 on Amazon.
Another interesting fact is that the Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime comes with a better RAM capacity (3GB) but it retails at a lower pricing than the newly launched Redmi 3S Plus; at Rs. 8,999. We don't know what Xiaomi was thinking before launching the Redmi 3S Plus as it is clearly costlier than its competing handsets and also scores low in terms of specs comparison. However, the Redmi 3S Plus is Xiaomi's first attempt to expand its offline presence in India. Being an offline-only product, the retailers will also enjoy flexibility in terms of pricing, which will be beneficial for the buyers as well. Another advantage of being an offline-only product is that retailers won't have to worry about the ongoing sales war between online retailers.
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