Xiaomi Unveils the Redmi Note 5A

Xiaomi’s Redmi series has proven itself successful, manufacturing budget smartphones and selling them at unbelievably low prices without sacrificing performance or essential features.

Their latest smartphone under the Redmi series is the Note 5A which was just launched at an event held in Beijing, China. It is the successor to the Redmi Note 4A that is currently available in the market.

Design and Display

The Note 5A comes with an emphasis on good build quality at a budget price range. It sports a sleek metal unibody. You get capacitive navigation buttons on the front. The antenna bands are on the back of the phone along with the primary camera and LED flash. The USB Type-C port and the dual speaker grilles are located on the bottom of the device whereas you will find the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the phone. There’s also a fingerprint sensor made available this time around on the 5A, although it’s reserved for the higher end models.

Up front you have a 5.5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. The display is big enough to enjoy games and various other forms of multimedia although we will reserve our comments about the resolution.

Hardware

With the Note 5A, you get the the option of both the Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 or 425 processor. The Snapdragon 435 variant comes with the choice of either a 3 GB+32 GB variant or a 4 GB+64 GB variant. Meanwhile with the Snapdragon 425 you are stuck with the 2 GB+16 GB variant of the 5A.

On the OS front Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A features Android 7.0 Nougat with MIUI 9. As far as skins go, MIUI is well optimized and doesn’t lag at all.

Camera and Battery

As far as the camera is concerned, the Note 5A has a 13 MP, f/2.2 aperture, primary camera which is accompanied with an LED flash.

There’s also phase detection autofocus available for faster auto-focusing. Xiaomi is upping its selfie game with a 16 MP front facing camera but it comes with a catch;the lowest end variant of the Note 5A is stuck with a 5 MP shooter instead.

Keeping everything powered is a 3,080 mAh battery. Given the low-res screen and MIUI’s well-known optimizations, a battery of this size will provide some very good backup time.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A Specifications

• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 435/ 425
• Dimensions: 153 x 76.2 x 7.5mm
• Weight: 150g
• Memory:
  • RAM: 2/3/4 GB
  • Internal Storage: 16/32/64 GB
  • Card Slot: yes, expandable by upto 128GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
• OS: Android 7.1 Nougat with MIUI 9
• Display: 5.5-inch LTPS IPS LCD, Full HD (1920 x 1080), 403ppi
• Camera:
  • Back: 13MP, f/2.2, PDAF, LED flash
  • Front: 16MP, f/2.0, LED Flash / 5MP
• Battery: 3,080mAh
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11, WiFi hotspot, Bluetooth V4.0, GPS-AGPS
• Sensors: Fingerprint, accelerometer, proximity, gyro and light sensor
• Price: 699 Yuan (PKR 11,066) / 899 Yuan (PKR 14,232) / 1199 Yuan (PKR 18,982)