Xiaomi redmi 4x smartphone MIUI 8.2 Fingerprint 4G FDD LTE 13.0MP

Redmi 4X Long Battery Life

4100 mAh Long Battery Life / 5" HD screen / Snapdragon 435 Octa Core 

Snapdragon 435 Octa Core CPU

Introduction

There's affordable, there's dirt cheap and then there's the Xiaomi Redmi lineup. The latest to come out of Xiaomi's bargain bin is the Redmi 4, or what's known in China as the Redmi 4X - just Xiaomi's naming scheme. The important thing is that it's running an international ROM right out of the box, complete with full support for Google services.

The Snapdragon 435 ticking inside is a lower midrange chip by Qualcomm built on a now somewhat dated 28nm process. Still, with no less than 8 cores and a slightly superior GPU, the Redmi 4 is a cut above the entry-level Redmi 4a, which we weren't quite happy with when we recently reviewed. 3GB is more than enough RAM for your dollar, and the adequate 32GB of storage can also be expanded, though you'd need to forgo the second SIM card in this case - it's a hybrid slot.

The display is a 5-inch 720p unit - the screen diagonal Xiaomi settled on since the Redmi 3 (all gazillion versions of it), and a resolution that fits the size and the budget alike. The camera setup doesn't offer any bells and whistles, but would you really expect that in a phone in this price range? A 13MP primary shooter and a 5MP selfie cam are a reasonable compromise in our book.

And then the Redmi 4 packs some goodies you may not even find in some flagships - namely an FM radio receiver and an IR blaster - remnants of times past, but still sought after by a few - next to a fingerprint scanner.

Obviously, getting so much phone for so little cash means trade-offs in one department or another. You may learn to work around the hybrid slot, or never really have any issue with it on account of using just one SIM or making do with 32GB of storage.

However, the lack of fast charging could prove to be an issue when the battery is running low and you're pressed for time. Another thing we don't like about the Redmi 4 is the dated Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow - you can cover it with all the latest MIUI, but it's still practically a 2 year-old OS at its core.