Xiaomi's Redmi series is quite popular among Indians because it provides many good features at an affordable price. Its Redmi 3S and Redmi 3S Prime were highly successful and the Chinese giant claimed to have sold four million units in just nine months.

Priced at Rs.8,999, Redmi 4, the successor, has improved the specifications and has a new design, with a lot of expectations.

The big question is, will it live up to these expectations? Yes if one looks at its design, battery and specifications, but when it comes to camera and memory, the phone will let you down.

Another thumbs down is its unavailability ~ this has been a big issue with the Redmi series.

Design and features

The phone has retained most of the features from its predecessor, Redmi 4A. Its metallic chassis, compact design and lightweight give the phone a premium look. The compact size fits in one hand. But the sharp edges of the phone make it quite slippery.

The power button and volume rockers are the well placed on the right side, while the left corner has a hybrid dual-SIM tray, which will take either two SIMs or one SIM and a microSD. On the top edge of the phone one can find a 3.5 mm audio socket and an infrared emitter.

At the bottom is a Micro-USB port and grilles on either side. The fingerprint scanner is at the rear and just above in right corner is a camera and a flash. The capacitive buttons for recent apps, home and back are the placed below the screen in the front.

However, the home button is not back-lit, which means there can be some problem in the dark. As for display Redmi 4 has a 5-inch HD (720×1280) IPS display with 2.5D curved-edge glass. The device has several connectivity options like 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and VoLTE.

Battery and camera

Usually camera and battery are considered the best features of Redmi phones, but not in this device, particularly the camera.

The phone has a 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, and an LED flash while the front camera is 5-megapixel with f/2.2 aperture. The picture quality is good and detailed, but when in low light the picture is hazy. Another problem with the camera is, it gets slow when its HDR mode is on. When it comes to battery, the phone has a non-removable 4100mAh battery, which is the best feature of the phone.

Specifications

The Xiaomi Redmi 4 has Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor and runs on Android Marshmallow 6.0 with Xiaomi's feature-rich MIUI 8. It comes in 3GB (2 GB/ 4GB RAM) along with 32 GB ROM (16 GB, and 64 GB), which canbeexpanded up to 128 GB via MicroSD card.

The phone runs smoothly, opening multiple tasks. Itsapps don't slow the phone.