Xiaomi Redmi 4A review: A good budget phone for its price

Redmi 4A, that’s Xiaomi’s latest phone for India. After selling over one million Redmi Note 4 phones, the company’s back with another phone for India. It also says this one is ‘Made in India’, whether that will mean a lot more units for the sale, remains to be seen. Like with other Redmi phones, Xiaomi’s focus is on budget pricing and offering good specifications, something you won’t always find at this price point.

Redmi 4A is priced at Rs 5,999 and will come in only one RAM+ Storage option: 2GB+16GB. There are three colours being introduced with Redmi 4A in India: Gold, Rose Gold and Dark Grey. However, if you’re wondering about the ‘Rose Gold,’ Xiaomi is only releasing that on April 3.

Xiaomi is now the number two smartphone vendor in India, and a lot of the credit goes to the Redmi smartphones. The Redmi 3S, 3S Prime were priced under Rs 10,000 and helped boost the company’s sales in the last quarter in 2016. The battery, design and overall performance ensured a lot of interest in these phones.

Strictly speaking though, Redmi 4A is not a successor to the Redmi 3S, especially if you compare the specifications and overall build. However, this is a budget phone, at a price point where volumes are still big. So does Xiaomi have another winner on its hands with the Redmi 4A? Here’s our review.

Specifications of Redmi 4A: 5-inch HD LCD IPS display (720p resolution | Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad-core processor at 1.4Ghz, Adreno 308 GPU | 2GB RAM + 16GB storage (expandable to 128GB)| 13MP rear camera + 5MP front camera | 3120 mAh battery | Android 6.0 with MIUI 8 |

Price: Rs 5,999

Redmi 4A

Now at first glance Redmi 4A looks like a lot of the other Redmi phones out there in the market. I got the ‘Dark Grey’ version for review, and the 5-inch display means it is a more compact phone. The phone sports a plastic unibody design and I can’t help compare it to Redmi 3S, which had a metal unibody at Rs 6,999.

Still the Redmi 4A offers a good grip, and is designed well; there’s a 13MP rear camera on the back, and the speakers are at the back of the device like it was with the Redmi Note 3. Redmi 4A relies on a micro-USB port for charging. There’s also an IR blaster on the front along with the 5MP camera; the IR blaster means you can use this smartphone to control compatible home devices like set-up boxes, air conditioners, fans, television sets, etc. This is a pretty neat feature to include on a budget phone.

So what’s good?

For a lot of people, the key with the Redmi 4A will be the specifications being offered at this price point, and these add up to quite a nice overall package. The 5-inch HD display is actually pretty good, and Xiaomi hasn’t reduced the resolution simply because this phone is priced lower. The viewing angles are good, you can use this display easily in the sunlight, though I kept the brightness at full. If your main usage is social media, watching videos on YouTube, this display does the job.