Xiaomi Redmi 5: Another worthy budget smartphone from Xiaomi

 

Design and Display

Xiaomi has crafted the Redmi 5 out of metal. The device features latest 18:9 aspect ratio display and feels premium to hold. The rear of the device houses the camera which is bulging out a bit from the phone's body. The fingerprint scanner is placed beneath the camera sensor. The volume rockers along with the power key are located on the right side of the device.The left side houses the SIM card tray and you will find the 3.5mm audio jack at the top of the handset. 

The dual speaker grills are placed at the bottom along with the microUSB slot in the middle. It would have been much appreciated if Xiaomi had used the Type C port instead. Overall, Xiaomi Redmi 5 is an ergonomic budget handset with a premium look and feel. Let's see what the device offers in terms of Display.

Xiaomi Redmi 5 comes with a 5.7 inches capacitive touchscreen display, with a screen resolution of 720*1440 pixels. With the short amount of time spent with the smartphone, I found the device's display quite responsive and vivid. The sunlight visibility of the device is also good. The display is bright enough in the sunlight which is less stressful for a user's eyes. The colour saturation on the display is also balanced so I would say that at this price range this display is quite impressive for video playback and gaming.

Camera: 12MP rear camera and 5MP front camera

Xiaomi Redmi 5 sports a 12MP primary camera that can record videos at 1080p format at30fps. The camera app comes with HDR mode that seems quite effective in challenging light conditions.

The 5MP front camera captures selfies with decent quality. We also didn't come across any lag in the camera performance in our short time with the smartphone. We will give the detailed review of the camera and the device performance in the coming days, so stay tuned with us.

Processor and storage

Xiaomi Redmi 5 is powered by a 2 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chipset, coupled with Adreno 506 GPU. The device was able to perform well when we used several apps simultaneously. The 2GB RAM is ample for everyday multitasking. The 16GB storage is expandable by up to 128GB via microSD card.
On the software department, the device ship with Android Nougat 7.1.2 with stable MIUI 9 on top of it, which is quite feature rich and mostly performs without any performance issues. However, Xiaomi could have shipped the device with Android 8.0 Oreo as the competition is catching up and most of the smartphone makers have started shipping their budget handsets with the latest Android version.

Battery and Connectivity

Xiaomi Redmi 5 comes with a 3,300mAH battery unit and the device lasts a day with basic usage. The connectivity options include Wi-Fi, 802.11 b/g/n, hotspot, v4.0, microUSB v2.0, with A-GPS, GLONASS.

Xiaomi Redmi 5, a budget category smartphone

Price and Conclusion

Xiaomi Redmi 5 is priced at Rs 7,999 and offers a good set of features. The affordable price range and Xiaomi's feature rich MIUI 9 makes this device a good deal for customers looking for a capable budget smartphone.

We will evaluate the smartphone's detailed performance in the coming week in our comprehensive review. Stay tuned on Gizbot.