Xiaomi Redmi 4A: Is this the best budget phone to purchase?

After Xiaomi had sold over a million Redmi Note 4 smartphones in India, they have come back with another budget smartphone the Redmi 4A. And just like any other Redmi device, they have focused on the budget price range offering. The Redmi 4A just simply amazes us as to how Xiaomi can provide such good specifications at this price-point.

Xiaomi Redmi 4A

Design

The first thing that anybody is going to notice is that the Xiaomi Redmi 4A is not made out of metal. Instead, it is made out of polycarbonate. Though they have tried to mimic the metal bodies with the top and bottom panels being different from the middle part.

the Redmi 4A is rocking a 5-inch display, with a simple design that resonates with the Redmi phones design legacy. The volume rockers and the power button is on the right side. On the left side, you can see the hybrid SIM slot. Charging port on the bottom. And a 3.5mm jack along with an IR blaster on the top.

The rear of the smartphone has been kept exceptionally clean and resembles the Redmi 3S in various ways. Though, the Redmi 4A does not come with a fingerprint sensor. The Redmi 4A has been launched in 3 colours in India - Dark Grey, Gold, and Rose Gold. We had the Rose Gold unit for the review.

Performance

Though the Redmi 4A being aimed at the people who are buying their first smartphone. It impressed us by showing good performance and easy handling which is not expected from a phone at this price. And although we had good times with the phone, there were times that we wished for some other device.

We tested the 4A with games like Asphalt 8 and Injustice. These games though running smoothly would give occasional lags and also would freeze at times. All of that could have been helped with a tad more bit of RAM.

The internal storage on this device is 16GB out of which 10.42GB is usable. We were thankful to god that this storage was expandable, though inserting a memory card means that you are sacrificing the dual SIM capability. The loudspeaker on the Redmi 4A is ok and nothing more. Xiaomi does not provide earphones in the sales package so we had to test the phone with ours and even with the audio tweaking options that they provide the phone on that part was an underperformer.

We also tested the Xiaomi Redmi 4A in Antutu and Quadrant benchmark tests and the scores were 27,567 and 16,693 respectively. Though these scores being nothing to boast about are good enough for this price range.

The battery inside the 4A is a 3120mAh non-removable battery. The smartphone was easily able to last us for a day on average usage. And we also loved the fact that this phone was able to full charge in less than 2 hours, that too without support for fast charging.

Specifications and Software

Redmi 4A sports a 5-inch 720p display with a 296ppi pixel density. The display is a good one and the colour reproduction was great. The 4A is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 425 clocked at 1.4GHz with Adreno 308 GPU. It has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage expandable up to 128GB. The 4A also supports 4G VoLTE which has been a big factor in India since the launch of Jio.

The 4A contains a hybrid dual SIM slot which is a disappointment as the phone only has 16GB of internal storage. The phone also contains the gyroscope, proximity, ambient light, and accelerometer sensors.

Though there is not much to talk about the software as all the Redmi phones use the same, the Redmi 4A runs on MIUI 8 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

Camera

The Xiaomi Redmi 4A comes with a 5 element 13-megapixel primary camera and a 5-megapixel secondary camera. Both the cameras have a f/2.2 aperture.

The primary camera is able to take decent shots in daylight but in low light, the camera is an underperformer. Also taking close-up shots is not a specialty of the camera. The front camera produces good photos but in low light situations, it also fails. The 4A can record 1080p videos at 30fps, which turns out surprisingly good videos.

Inside the box

The box of the Xiaomi Redmi 4A includes the following -

• The Redmi 4A
• Charger
• Micro-USB cable
• Warranty Card
• User Guide
• SIM ejection tool

The box also contains the Made In India tag, as now Xiaomi manufactures 95 percent of its smartphones in India.

Verdict

The Xiaomi Redmi 4A is a good smartphone at its price-point, and we expect it will be a complete hit in the Indian market. Especially with all the features, it offers at Rs.5,999.

But, we would rather recommend our readers to spend the extra 1-2k and go in for the Redmi 3S or the 3S Prime. As those are simply much better smartphones than the 4A. Or you could just simply wait out for the next Redmi smartphone.

We would recommend you to skip the Redmi 4A.