If you have been wondering since when smartphones have started becoming affordable, it all started when a Chinese startup company got out of its homegrown by selling smartphones – Xiaomi. The Redmi smartphone has been a hit in the low cost smartphone segment a couple of years back, it offers mid-range hardware at entry level price and an extremely customizable software out of the box, which eventually lead to a cheap smartphone war among other phone makers. Meet the Redmi 2, Xiaomi’s third iteration of its value for money handset, it gets hardware refresh and adapts the same design language similar to the company’s other smartphones, after two weeks of using has the phone proven itself to be a worthy successor or stand a chance to be the next big hit in the low cost smartphone segment? We find out.
Xiaomi Redmi 2 Hardware Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 64-bit 1.2GHz Quad-Core
RAM/ROM: 1GB/8GB ROM expandable via MicroSD up to 128GB
Display: 4.7″ HD (1280×720) IPS with AGC Dragon Trail Glass
Camera: 8MP Sony BSI f/2.2 (Rear), 2MP (Front)
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, BT 4.0, Dual SIM 4G Standby
Networks: 4G LTE Cat 4/DC-HSPA+/GSM
Battery: 2200mAh
Design and Hardware
I like the Redmi 2’s aesthetics, despite not sporting a sleek form factor or a metal body like premium smartphones, the phone is reasonably light at 120 grams and its 9.3mm thickness still fits pretty well in my hands. Unlike the Redmi 1s, the Redmi 2 is now less boxy, has slightly rounded corners like its bigger Redmi Note brother and now features a laminated display that eliminates the gap between the glass and digitizer, thus resulting a better touch response and viewing angles. Although the display resolution hasn’t been increased, I still find it quite a pleasure to look at and it doesn’t make me miss Quad HD displays.
Our Redmi 1s review unit last year was a White color model which wasn’t sold locally which many of our friends loved, Xiaomi has fortunately decided to sell the white color variant of its new smartphone this time, its back cover is now made of polycarbonate material instead of the glossy coating, making the phone less slippery to hold on hand.
I wasn’t really impressed with the Redmi 1s having a MiniSIM slot at the back last year, the Redmi 2 this time sports two MicroSIM slots on the back that will support dual 4G standby and the removable battery is still in place. This is definitely one of the best entry-level hardware design that I’ve ever seen from a phone maker, it gives frequent travelers an option to have two SIMs (local and overseas) in the phone without even thinking to swap them out and even if you need to, at least you won’t be needing a SIM ejector pin.
The Redmi 2’s camera LED flash and loudspeaker has been shifted to a different position this time and its loudspeaker produces extremely loud and clear volumes without distorting at playing heavy bass music. Xiaomi has also made changes to the phone’s side buttons with a chrome finish, giving it a slight premium feel, its home menu buttons doesn’t come with lighting so expect a hard time on pressing them in a dark room.
The Redmi 2’s design isn’t ground breaking however Xiaomi has made the necessary updates to it, giving it a much modern design than its predecessor and you definitely won’t feel shy putting it on the table showing off to your friends. In fact, some of our friends think that the Redmi 2 costs RM1000 which it isn’t.
Software and User Experience
The Redmi 2 comes with Xiaomi’s own iOS inspired MIUI v6 software based on Android 4.4 KitKat and as usual, Xiaomi hasn’t strip features off the software despite running on a lower end hardware. To be honest, I’m quite fond of the software despite criticisms around, it offers lots of customization and flexibility that some skins don’t offer and you’re able to download a premium set of free themes to change the phone’s user experience, its color scheme across default apps are also quite pleasing to the eye and from its design alone, you can tell that MIUI has really come a long way.
All that fondness of the software have stopped after using the Redmi 2 for a couple of days, although the software is more reliable than the Mi Pad, there seems to be a universal bug that tends to happen on the latest build of the software, it apparently delays all my push notifications to at least 3-4 hours or until I open the app itself, it hogs up the phone’s RAM easily and fail to launch apps properly at time, occasionally showing Force Closes which I have no idea why and that has become a really disappointing experience.
Sure enough, most would blame the phone’s insufficient RAM that bottlenecks the Snapdragon 410 CPU’s performance, however the worse part in the Redmi 2 is the amount of available user storage, the user is only given a mere 5.75GB of total storage and around 5GB of accessible storage for apps and games, moving apps to the SD card isn’t possible due to the phone’s partition design, which has been a flaw since the Redmi 1s. Therefore, the Redmi 2 is technically a smartphone without expandability and if you had purchased a 64GB memory card for it, you’d better use it for other purposes, as the Redmi 2 will only read music and videos from it.
Last but not the least, the recent software builds of MIUI v6 has become a beautiful disappointment to me, Xiaomi’s hardware and software is beautiful, however that buggy software experience isn’t making the Redmi 2 worth as a daily working driver, although solutions are mostly available at the MIUI forum, unless you are geeky or resourceful enough, otherwise the average joe isn’t going to appreciate such issues.
Camera
The Redmi 2’s camera is the best that I’ve seen on an entry level device, its Sony BSI f/2.2 sensor takes beautiful pictures in and outdoors and thankfully this time, the Redmi 2 is now able to save pictures and videos back into the SD card. Of course, don’t expect speedy launch and shutter speeds from the Redmi 2’s system performance, check out the pictures down below.
Xiaomi has upgraded the Redmi 2’s front camera to a 2-megapixel sensor, despite of a minor upgrade it takes beautiful pictures and that beauty effect never fail to impress.
Video recording quality isn’t good, the camera still has metering issues which was also present on its predecessor, especially when you’re out in strong sunlight you’ll notice sudden dark and bright frames, audio quality isn’t great but still acceptable for an entry-level smartphone.
Benchmarks, Battery Life and Network Quality
Even though the Snapdragon 410 may be more efficient and features 64-bit processing power when compared to its predecessor, benchmark scores isn’t much better on the Redmi 2 which could be due to the 1GB RAM that causes a bottleneck to the overall results, otherwise we simply blame MIUI’s RAM management issues.
Despite of all those software and performance issues, battery life is surprisingly impressive on the Redmi 2 given that 2200mAh is relatively small in today’s standards and this is a dual SIM 4G standby smartphone. Don’t forget that even if the battery runs out in the middle of the day, you could always purchase a spare to replace it and the phone supports Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 1.0 technology that will juice up your phone in no time.
Most people are always skeptical about network issues when it comes to buying Chinese devices, the Redmi 2’s dual SIM 4Gstandby works extremely well and I’ve never encountered signal drops, callers have also reported a good voice call quality from my end and 4G data connection works fast and reliably over the Maxis 4G LTE network, easily hitting 20-30Mbps of download speeds in good coverage areas.
Verdict
Even though the Redmi 2 is a minor upgrade from the Redmi 1s, its improved hardware design is a tremendous improvement from the Redmi 1s and that’s what really matters the most on an entry-level smartphone, while specs are equally important as well Xiaomi should really make improvements to its software if it wants to work well on an entry level hardware, the phone’s memory limitation and buggy software is the real deal breaker however at the price of RM449, you are literally purchasing a phone with features that costs at least RM1000, that includes a great camera and Dual SIM 4G LTE support. If you don’t mind getting a little geeky, there is actually a AOSP ROM available for the Redmi 2 in the MIUI forums, flash it on to the phone and most of the issues that I mentioned will probably be gone and I’ll be doing this to my very own Redmi 2 soon.
The Good:
+ Improved aesthetics
+ Improved display
+ Good camera
+ Decent battery life
+ Dual SIM 4G standby
The Not so Good:
– MIUI v6 unreliable and full of bugs
– Limited storage for apps
– RAM uses up easily
– Poor video recording performance
The Xiaomi Redmi 2 gets a score of 7.6/10.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
