Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 32GB Snapdragon Variant.
Global Stable ROM 7.5.3(LHOMIDE)
Hi, Readers this is my First review feeling excited.! Lets get started..
This review is not just about Initial Impressions , its a in-depth review because I have been using this mobile as my daily driver for the past 2 months.
The Review comprises of the following
The Review comprises of the following
- WHATS INSIDE THE BOX ?
- SPECIFICATIONS
- DESIGN AND BUILD QUALITY
- PERFORMANCE (BASICS)
- PERFORMANCE (ADVANCED)
- MULTIMEDIA
- PROS AND CONS
- FINAL VERDICT
WHATS INSIDE THE BOX ?
- MOBILE
- TRAVEL ADAPTER 2A
- REMOVABLE DATA CABLE 1 metre (approx)
- USER MANUAL
WHATS NOT INSIDE THE BOX !
- HEADPHONES
- SCREEN PROTECTOR
- CASE
SPECIFICATION
Powered by Snap dragoon 650 Hexa-Core Processor with a 4050mah battery
RAM : 3GB
ROM : 32GB
CAMERA : 16MP & 5MP (not a wide angle lens)
and for the detailed spec and to make it simple here it is SPEC SHEET (GSM arena)
DESIGN AND BUILD QUALITY
External Body : The device comprises a metal body of Aluminium with top antenna part made of plastic underneath is housed the Antennae parts. The sleek thin body of metal makes it look great but when you hold it ,its slippery like a butter-mixed-soap! The metal body without texture is the reason for this slip so must Buy a case... Any way it has a Good build .It manages to maintain a slim profile despite of big battery and it weighs around 160gms.
Display : The 5.5 inch Fully laminated 1080p HD display look awesome and its a immense pleasure to watch video and games. Sadly NO GORILLA GLASS to protect this beauty but Xiaomi says that they have incorporated a 3rd party protection to protect the glass. Yes,It seems to be true I dropped the mobile several time due to its slippery nature and it survived . I have not installed any temper glass or screen guard but till now no scratches. So some sort of protection is present. Something is always better than Nothing.No difficulties to use mobile under direct sunlight thanks to Sunlight Display technology. The Night mode/Read mode option gives a tweak to display during night and low light time so that we can use /read without the strain of Blue Light in Night.
PERFORMANCE (BASIC)
The reason for mentioning Basics is because these are the parameter we call the Mobile as Mobile.! So from this review on-wards you would be seeing this section in every future reviews
Call Quality Transmission : The Redmi Note 3 has one Primary Mic and one secondary noise cancellation mic which helps to maintain our voice audible to other side.Its a Volte enabled mobile so 4G calling is possible with Networks like Jio . But have not tried that yet.
Call Quality Reception : The speaker used for calling purpose is average not Excellent. Let me tell you why. You can't here the person on other side when you are on the noisy areas like class rooms, traffic places but still manageable audio output is present if you put some effort and carefully listen to them.Its not Poor, Its not excellent lies somewhere in the middle. Hope you get it.
Xiaomi should have increased the output but missed. But one notable point is using Whats app call and other Internet based call we could hear them loud and clear due to the advantage of 3G, 4G, WiFi over traditional call.
And there is a small bug which Xiaomi is still working on. where the screen goes blank due to proximity sensor calibration, you cant disconnect the call until the person on the other side disconnects until that time you get blank screen. After that everything comes normal. Rebooting the device solves the issue. This bug is only prone to some devices not all devices. So if you are lucky you would not having this issue. This bug is not very serious because I hardly experience this. It becomes serious issue based on your situation. Imagine you are on position where the other person forgets to disconnect the call. Then you have to wait till he again disconnects or your out of your talk time balance.
BATTERY LIFE:
The massive 4050mah battery in this mobile lasts around 1 day with heavy usage and about an half day extra with mixed usage. I get a great screen on time around 7-8Hrs whic is a great for a Full HD display. If you are a constant 4G user you would get a screen time of 5-6 Hrs. The charging time from 0-100% takes around 2hrs 15 mins which is normal and also the Quick charge 1.0 is outdated but serves the purpose. Xiaomi have not incorporated the quick charge 2.0 even though the processor supports quick charge 2.0
So overall a pretty decent Basic performance without struggling to achieve the Perfect Mark.
PERFORMANCE (ADVANCED)
CAMERA
Primary Camera
The 16 MP camera does its job perfectly in Broad Day Light but fails to do so in low light conditions like all the budget mobiles out there.
Day Light Condition
The colors are natural and looks great. The details are accurate up-to a considerable extent. Higher the day light higher the quality. The sample shots below would give you an idea. The video is recorded at 1080p HD 4K video recording is not supported by default camera app. The lack of Optical Image Stabilization is felt in the video.
Day Light Condition
The colors are natural and looks great. The details are accurate up-to a considerable extent. Higher the day light higher the quality. The sample shots below would give you an idea. The video is recorded at 1080p HD 4K video recording is not supported by default camera app. The lack of Optical Image Stabilization is felt in the video.
Low Light Condition
The low light conditions are above the poor performance mark and below the average mark. Dual tone flash helps to some extent but the lack of clarity and over exposure spoils the photo . We can't expect a DSLR performance at this price point. Given the price point the camera produces a average performance.
The low light conditions are above the poor performance mark and below the average mark. Dual tone flash helps to some extent but the lack of clarity and over exposure spoils the photo . We can't expect a DSLR performance at this price point. Given the price point the camera produces a average performance.
The camera interface also has Manual mode where we can adjust the ISO and lighting condition and also various scene modes and some basic filters are available.
Front Camera :
The 5 MP camera does a decent job Day Light but fails miserably in low light conditions.
Day Light Condition
In good lighting condition the selfie looks great and captures good amount of details. Beauty mode helps in making the face smooth and bright but washes out the skin detail.The video is recorded at 720p which is decent in performance.
In good lighting condition the selfie looks great and captures good amount of details. Beauty mode helps in making the face smooth and bright but washes out the skin detail.The video is recorded at 720p which is decent in performance.
Low Light Condition
The 5MP is not a good options for taking selfies in low light conditions. Its better not to take . !
NOTE : PHOTO SAMPLES AT END OF BLOG
The 5MP is not a good options for taking selfies in low light conditions. Its better not to take . !
NOTE : PHOTO SAMPLES AT END OF BLOG
SENSORS
Don't know what to say. Has a bunch of sensors but all are poorly calibrated particularly all the basic sensors like GYROSCOPE , ACCELEROMETER, PROXIMITY SENSOR.
Because of this, VR experience is totally spoiled and till now there are no permanent fixes . There are some round ups and temporary fixes . You could take them to service center they might be able to fix some of the sensor issues. Still if these sensors do not matter for you , you could ignore them.While playing Asphalt 8 you should use screen mounted controls instead of the one which uses accelerometer.
MIUI 7.5.3 and RAM MANAGEMENT
Personally I prefer Stock Android without customization but the MIUI is just the opposite . Its heavily customized for more personalized experience. Its has its own pros and cons.
I am pretty surprised that the customization indeed helps us in useful way that too in the latest MIUI 7.5 comes with a ton of options and features which is useful like Quick Ball .etc., If its a 3GB variant you no need to worry about lags due to its customization. I am pretty sure that 2GB variant would lag at some point of time. MIUI 8 is on the way. May be in the second week of August we can expect the MIUI 8. Mi Drop, Mi mover are some useful tweaks . One handed mode helps us use to the device in one hand by shrinking the screen size. The current version based on lollipop where as the MIUI 8 is based on Marshmallow. MIUI gives frequent updates on bug fixes but lags far behind when comes to the Android update. So Android N may take upto 8-12 months , its worth to mention that MIUI 8 has around 85-90% of the features of Android N which also includes a Multi-Window
The reason I clubbed the OS and RAM section is that the MIUI has a good RAM management but consumes lot of RAM which both helps and suffocates the Multi-Tasking. Let me explain
If you are playing Asphalt 8 a friend of you calls you in between. You have a conversation about 10 minutes and you chat for 5 mins in whats app . again if you resume the Asphalt 8 app it is still in memory you can resume your game without reloading.
But if you open a chrome browser or an photo editing tool in between the game what happens ? Yes you will be experiencing lags and Force Close. Its a considerable lag. The stock android would excel in this segment. Anyways you should worry only if you are such a great multi-tasker. The Free Ram after closing all the Background apps is about 1.6-1.8GB for a 3GB variant. Not sure of 2GB variant . It may be around 800MB. Its better to spend the extra bucks on a 32GB variant.
STORAGE :
In 32GB variant Available space is around 26.28GB of which user Accesible memory is approximately 24.6GB . Storage is expandable upto 128GB. The Hybrid slot allows you either to have the following setup
memory card+micro sim
micro sim+nano sim
As we can see the nano sim slot acts either as a Sim slot or as storage slot. OTG is supported and It lacks NFC .
MULTIMEDIA
AUDIO :
The Audio is good not the best. The speaker grill is placed at the back so sometimes we may miss notifications if you don't have your Vibration Turned ON. The headphones experience is great though with customisable as well as specialized audio settings provided for the headphones . There is no earphone included in the package.
VIDEO :
The Full HD screen takes care of all the HD movies and videos and it can handle short duration 4K videos without any issues. The details are crisp and neat even in sunlight condition.
GAMING:
Adreno 520 GPU does the job perfectly without much trouble. Graphics intense games like Asphalt 8, Unkilled and RPG games are amazingly playable without any lag. Continuous gaming makes the device warm and affects the battery drain which is normal in heavy game. Though some game like Assassin Creed may incur frame drops. To solve this you may need to reduce your graphic play to low/medium. Yeah you can play Pokemon Go without no trouble. GPS works fine and huge battery ensures extra screen on time.
COMPLIMENTARY FEATURES:
IR BLASTER
The Redmi Note 3 includes an IR blaster which is quite hard to fund in the budget segment. It comes handy by supporting nearly all devices including Air Conditioners, Television, Music system etc., It is done by the built in app Mi Remote
FINGER PRINT SENSOR
This is the most important feature which made this Note 3 a great success. The High quality fingerprint sensors does it job perfectly . It was very fast in the beginning after few updates still its fast but not as fast as it was in the beginning. The sensor is circle in shape enabling 360 degree finger detection.We can store a maximum of 5 fingers .
PROS AND CONS
Nobody is perfect same applies to our smart phones also each mobile have their own merits and demerits.
PROS:
- Value For Money
- 3GB RAM
- Sleek Design
- Huge Battery
- FULL HD Laminated Display
- Finger Print Sensor
CONS
- Some may not like MIUI's Heavy customization
- Sensor Bugs
- Lack of Gorilla glass protection
- Low light Camera Performance
FINAL VERDICT
The hardware makes the device an impressive one on paper yet struggling to achieve the mark. This device is worth the price if you are ready to ignore the sensor issues and the above mentioned demerits.
PRICING
If you are interested in buying you can use http://amzn.to/2a7L8xE to purchase the device from Amazon
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 16gb 2gb - Rs.9999/-
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 32gb 3gb - Rs.11999/-.
NOTE : BENCH MARKS AND PHOTO SAMPLES IN THE LINK BELOW
Also see: Redmi 3S, Galaxy Note 7 - New Features , Lenovo K5 Note Initial Impressions and 5 Things to Know , Redmi Note 3 Full Review
If you like the post please do comment below in comment section and share your response.
Happy Reading as always !
will be impressive if photos speaks along with words...
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, Mr.Idhaya Chandran .As of now the photos are attached to links at the end of post...
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