Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 hands-on: The Snapdragon Edition

Introduction

The Redmi series has always been Xiaomi's bread and butter. Combining good design, features, and reasonable performance at a very attractive price, the Redmi series has redefined for many what a good budget smartphone should be like.

The latest in the series is the Redmi Note 3. The phone is the successor to last year's Redmi Note 2 and improves upon several key aspects, such as a metal body, fingerprint sensor, brand new chipset, and a larger battery. It's especially improved over the original Redmi Note Prime, which would be a big deal for people in India who never got the Redmi Note 2.

Today, the company is launching the Redmi Note 3 in India. And even though we already have the smartphone reviewed, it was based on a Mediatek chipset. The new release comes with Snapdragon 650 and since we've had the chance to play with it for the past few days, we'd gladly share our impressions.

Redmi Note 3 at a glance

• Aluminum body
• 5.5-inch, 1920x1080 IPS LCD
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 650; 2x 1.8GHz Cortex-A72 + 4x 1.2GHz Cortex-A53; Adreno 510
• 2GB RAM with 16GB storage/3GB RAM with 32GB storage; microSD support
• Dual SIM, LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, IR, microUSB
• 16 megapixel rear camera with PDAF, f2.0 aperture, dual LED flash
• 5 megapixel front camera, f2.0 aperture
• Fingerprint sensor
• 4050mAh battery
• Android 5.1.1 with MIUI 7

Compared to Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)

• microSD (occupies SIM 2 slot)
• Higher resolution camera (16MP vs. 13MP)
• Better Snapdragon 650 chipset with faster processor and more powerful graphics