Xiaomi Redmi 5A with MIUI 9 and metal body announced: Expected to be a huge success in India

Xiaomi has quietly announced the Redmi 5A budget smartphone.

| Published: Monday, October 16, 2017, 16:08 [IST]

Xiaomi Redmi 5A is now official. Well, the company has quietly unveiled the budget smartphone without much fanfare.

Xiaomi Redmi 5A with MIUI 9 and metal body announced

Xiaomi has been teasing the Redmi 5A for the past few days. In a recent poster, we got to know that the smartphone might feature a long-lasting battery that can render up to 8 days of standby time. Also, the device was speculated to be launched with MIUI 9 out of the box. However, the launch date of the smartphone was not revealed.

Now, the Redmi 5A is official and comes with a few notable features that will make the device stand out from the competition. The Redmi 5A comes with almost similar specifications as its predecessor - the Redmi 4A but has some notable differences.

Design

The Xiaomi Redmi 5A features a metal body, which is a notable difference in comparison to the Redmi 4A made of plastic. Besides this, the smartphone has a design that is pretty similar to the previous generation model. Despite the metal body, the smartphone appears to be lightweight. There are speaker grills at the rear and the main camera is tilted towards the left. As it is a budget smartphone, there is no fingerprint sensor on board just like its prequel.

Specifications

The Redmi 5A is fitted with a 5-inch HD 720p display and makes use of a quad-core 64-bit Snapdragon 425 SoC clocked at 1.2GHz. This processor is teamed up with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage space that can be expanded further up to 128GB using a microSD card. The Redmi 5A does not have a 3GB RAM variant as in the case of the Redmi 4A. The device gets the necessary power from a 3000mAh battery, which is 120mAh smaller in terms of capacity as opposed to its predecessor but this shouldn't make a significant difference.

On the imaging front, the Xiaomi Redmi 5A sports a 13MP main camera with PDAF and LED flash. Up front, there is a 5MP selfie camera.

Software and Connectivity

The Redmi 5A runs MIUI 9 based on Android Nougat out of the box. On the connectivity front, the device supports 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and dual SIM cards with the hybrid SIM slot.

Price and Availability

The Redmi 5A is priced at 599 yuan (approx. Rs. 5,900). The device will be available via both online and offline stores starting from October 17 at 10 AM via Mi Mall, Mi Home, JD.com, Mi Stores, and more in China. The global availability of the Redmi 5A is yet to be announced by the company.

Impact on Indian market

Having said that, we know that the Xiaomi Redmi 5A will be available in the company's home market China from tomorrow. As India is one of the significant markets for Xiaomi, we can expect this smartphone to be launched in the country in the coming weeks.

Given that the Redmi 4A and Redmi Note 4 are already pretty successful in India, we believe that the Redmi 5A will definitely take the success of Xiaomi to the next step. The smartphone will be priced competitively in the budget market segment and will definitely give a tough competition to the other devices in the market.