Review: Xiaomi RedMi Note

PACKAGING

Redmi Note was packaged in one container box which there are 2 smaller boxes inside, one for the unit and the other for the charger. It also comes with 2 Micro-SIM to Mini-SIM Adapter inside plastic pouch, in case you only have Micro-SIM already.

The boxes are classic brown-color cardboard without any finishing, shrink-wrapped with clear plastic without any pictures or photos or anything other than “mi” sign at the top left of the unit box. While at the back there is sticker at the bottom which states specifications, IMEI number, and product serial number.

The choice of using bare-bone boxes I think is due to cost-cutting to give cheap price for the end-user. But in my opinion, although it’s roughly undecorated box, the overall design and sign markings are quite nice, clean, simple, and well designed. For some other people, the material can be seen quite “cheapo”.

Looking inside the box, the unit is right at the front just as Apple products (iPad and iPhone) placement supported with a slightly thinner cardboard. The brownish classic cardboard look is everywhere. All of the materials are using the same color-theme, although some of the cardboards I think have different materials.

Overall the packaging are heavily inspired from Apple products (some of the design are almost identical) with little design modifications for cheaper production.

WHAT’S INSIDE?

Inside the unit box, there are 3 other items: battery, USB cable, and small user manual. No earphone or PC connection software included. I think this is again due to price-cut for end-user. For some user cheap earphone is better than no earphone at all, especially some of the user using it for Radio Antenna only. But most music maniacs always have their own quality earphone available. Xiaomi itself sell their in-ear earphone for about $20.

The small user manual only consist some basic functionality like instruction to how to open the back cover, which is quite normal these days. As I remember my own iPad 2 user manual is already useless, since the OS already updated several time with totally different UI.

The charger is inside separate box from the main unit, which probably makes a little faster for Xiaomi to provide different outlet standard with fix-mount design. Maybe again in my opinion it’s cheaper to manufacture than Apple and Blackberry which use interchangeable-mount design.

THE UNIT

From my perspective the unit is quite nice looking for $200 product. It is simple and well designed with standard Android 3 buttons at the bottom of the screen. While at the right side, there are Volume Rocker button and Power button. No dedicated camera button or any other buttons.

At the top of the screen there are status led, 5mpx front-facing camera, phone speaker and proximity sensor, which kinda standard for smartphones.

At the bottom part there is USB port for charging and PC connectivity, while at the top part there is standard 3.5mm earphone jack.

The external speaker is at the bottom left part of the backside, as for me, I don’t really like this position, since it can be unheard when I put the unit on the bed for example. The Apple iPad 2 approach is putting it at the slanted curved part of the bottom side which for me a slightly better approach (while it propose another problem too).

Below the main camera lens, RedMi Note equipped with 1 LED Flash which can be used as flashlight from the default Torch Apps.

From technical specification, RedMi Note equipped with MTK6592 Octa-Core ARM Cortex-A7 processor running at 1.7GHz, 2GB LPDDR2 of RAM and 8GB EMMC for internal storage. That’s quite amazing for $200 smartphone, since Samsung still only using Quad-Core for their Galaxy Note 4. I think it’s their strategy for price cut by using 8 cores with old A7 design rather using newer A9 design to achieve comparable performance.

Compared to my Samsung Galaxy Core Duo which also around $200 using only Dual Core ARM Cortex-A5, it’s really like Samsung has robbed you. The only turndown is no Gorilla Glass for RedMi Note, which is no problem for me, since I always put screen protector no matter Gorilla Glass or not.

By running AnTuTu I got score 26036, comparing at the same time with my brother-in-law’s Samsung Galaxy Note 2, he got score 17860 (he said that when he purchased his phone, the score went up about 2100, probably my RedMi Note will also went down after installing a lot of game too… I will test it again some time in the future), which is a great difference since they came from very different price level.

What I really love from RedMi Note is Xiaomi decided to give SD Card expansion slot which is a huge favor for me since Mi3 and Mi4 doesn’t include expansion slot, so the user stuck with whatever storage size they got.

Furthermore, one more feature that is really useful for me, that RedMi Note equipped with Dual-On GSM which one of it has WCDMA connection for high speed data connection. That mean I can put my already well-known number and still able to use cheapest data plan available from other operator, perfect combination for me.

RedMi Note 13 megapixels camera is amazing! With touch autofocus, I can get almost comparable result with Samsung’s Galaxy Note for $200 phone!! Front camera also equipped with amazing 5 megapixels perfect for selfie-lover!

Some people says MTK’s GPS quite slow, so I try to test the GPS, surprisingly, it instantly connected to available GPS satellite under a minute!! I don’t really trust my eyes at first, so I shut off the GPS, and turn on it again, this time I use it inside my house… again my GPS almost instantly connected and progressively pinpoint my location about a minute… very nice for phone at this price…

The only downturn for me is how hard it is to open the back-cover of the unit to access battery, SIM cards and memory card, since it doesn’t have any notch to ease the process, I happened to struggle using my quite short nails.

MiUI

When I first time turned on the unit, after mi logo disappeared from the screen, I was presented with questions for setting up the phone and creating (or using existing) Google and Xiaomi Account (which I declined) for backup storage and MiChat. As well as Apple iOS, be prepared to have WiFi available or data plan available from your SIM Card, since I can’t figure out a way to activate the phone without using any Internet available. You keep presented the same wizard for activating the phone every time you turn on the phone if you haven’t done that.

After the activation wizard, I was presented with the amazing MiUI experience which from my opinion, “the best Android UI available”. I’ve seen TouchWiz and other standard Android UI which shared some of the original Android UI concept, while MiUI doesn’t share most of the original Android UI.

The first thing you’ll notify in MiUI from any other Android UI is the absent of standard “dual screen” Android’s “Home Screen” and “Applications & Widgets Screen”, which for some user, the “dual screen” is kinda confusing. As in iOS concept, MiUI only has Home Screen which you can slide and adding more pages.

The standard MiUI applications are using nice, clean, and simple icons which pleasing my eyes. And the one I like is, Xiaomi already grouped all of Google standard apps inside one “Google” folder which is very convenient for me and scores more in cleanliness. The default apps from MiUI also has their own group under “Tools” folder which we can find Torch, or Calculator or any other useful small utilities.

Settings App is heavily customized and doesn’t share the same Theme as original Android does, and for me, it is beautifully designed theme.

The other thing I love is MiUI already gives memory cleaner and other memory sweeper for optimizing memory use by default inside the OS. While at any other Android phone I need to install additional program like Clean Master.

Worry about viruses? Don’t be… because MiUI already equipped with built-in Security Check and Virus Scanner which you can access from Security app. You don’t need to install Antivirus from 3rd party anymore. This is why I really fall in love with MiUI from the first sight.

The rest of the MiUI is really crafted beautifully for your eyes which is why you’ll get different experience with MiUI if you’ve used any other Android UI before. Too many things to be mentioned in this limited space… I recommended you to borrow and try by yourself if one of your friend got Xiaomi’s phone.

A little disappointment probably goes to the Jelly Bean version which still uses 4.2.2 or API level 17. As my test… one of my favorite game: “Tsum Tsum” crashed at LINE Login screen after hitting Agree button at User Agreement screen… which makes me unable to play the game… I’m not so sure if the crash caused by MiUI or some other problem from the game… The only thing than questioning me is why it crashed at stupid button rather than crashed at the middle of the game?

The next thing I try is the MiUI update by OTA… MiUI will prompted you to backup your data first before running the update in case anything bad happening, or you can skip the backup and go straight to the update. The update is quite simple, just wait until the update downloaded completely, and then the device restarted after updating… just make sure you have enough power left, since MiUI doesn’t warn you if your battery is not full or your phone not connected to the power source as in iOS does. After updating… I got no noticeable problem at all, and I didn’t need to restore any of my backup since everything went fine.

BATTERY

As I write this review, I am using my RedMi Note for about a couple of days… so this is my experience.

To me, a large battery is a must. I don’t really like to be bothered by plugging my phone with Power Bank in the middle of my busy day. Although I tend to buy a Power Bank, but most of the time I don’t really like to be bothered with my phone become useless in some important events. Luckily RedMi Note comes with 3200mAH battery that in the last 2 days serves me quite well from 100% fully charged at night down to about 13% at 4 pm the next day. The other day, I noticed that I started at 96% at 5 am, and ended at 22% at 6 pm. So I think it must be because I’m busy installing and customizing and with a lot of curiosity trying everything out from my new phone at the first day that makes the battery drained so much.

I found out that MiUI let you scheduled your phone to be using other power profile at night when you sleep. Because most of the times I tend to charge my phone at the end of the day and hoping that it already fully charged before I sleep to prevent overcharging. So to conserve battery for the next day, I really like the idea of putting my phone into GSM mode only (turning of 3G and any data) by midnight and restore my power settings one hour before I wake up in the morning. The reason I always like to keep my phone at night is, anyone, especially my family can call me anytime at the middle of the night in case something emergency happened.

To conserve power more, I tend to use my office WiFi connection when working at the office. MiUI will turn off any 3G data connection once the WiFi connected and let any data go through the WiFi rather than using 3G connection.

CONCLUSION

All in all RedMi Note is a great phone at great price… I really recommend this phone to anyone who’d like to move from cheap-lacky Android phones or anyone who’d like to buy a descent phone with tight-budget. As my experience, you get most of the value with very reasonable price.

Pros: Octa-Core 1.7GHz, big RAM (2GB), big screen, storage expansion slot, really nice easy to use MiUI interface, big battery capacity, Dual-On SIM Card, fast-response GPS (as opposed by some people assuming MTK’s GPS is slow), 13 megapixels camera + 5 megapixels secondary camera creating descent quality photos.

Cons: still using Cortex-A7 processor, no stylus, doesn’t come with earphones, no Gorilla Glass, still using Android Jelly Bean 4.2, only one WCDMA connection (the other SIM only topped at EDGE speed).

 

Disclaimer: This review is written by Danny Kurniawan and published here with his permission.