[Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Guides, News, & Discussion] raghav.sethi:
I started using the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 a few days ago,and I’d list all the things you need to know if you’re looking forward to buy this phone.

So, first things first, it was a very intricate job to buy this device majorly due to crappy attempt by amazon to sell it through flash sale. Even if you pre-registered, you’d still face many problems. Sometimes, the website crashes or sometimes it doesn’t let you checkout even if the item was in your cart and then says ‘you didn’t checkout on time’ and the item gets unavailable. I myself got this device after three weeks of trying. So, I’d suggest you buy it through mi.com/in rather than amazon.

The phone comes with a 5.50-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels at a PPI of 403 pixels per inch. s powered by 1.4GHz hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor and it comes in two variants- 2GB RAM with 16GB internal storage and the other one with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage, both are priced at ₹9,999 and ₹11,999 respectively. It has expandable storage. It’s dual SIM. SIM 1 is micro SIM and you have a choice to put micro SIM or a microSD card. That means you cannot have both SIMs and a microSD card. You have to choose between the microSD card and the second SIM.

The phone has a massive 4050mAh battery due to which the phone may seem a little heavy, 165g to be precise but i don’t think that would be a problem since the phone is packed with features. This battery can give you 7+ hours of on-screen time. So you’ll need to charge it once a day if you’re a heavy user who plays games too much. I personally play alot of games and the phone’s battery has not been an issue for me. If you’re a light user you may get past two days with this battery. Xiaomi claims it has fast charging but practically it’s not that fast, it can take around 2.5 hours to get from 15% to 100%.

Xiaomi claims it has a 16MP rear camera, with f/2.0 aperture , phase detection autofocus and dual-LED (dual tone) flash, but let’s be realistic the camera is average. You won’t have any major complaints with the camera, but comparative to other phones, it’s not that good. But then again, it’s a very low price range. So if you’re someone who uses camera alot and it’s one of your major concerns, this might not be the phone for you. The front 5MP Camera is pretty impressive, but the pictures lack in saturation.

I’m personally not a big fan of Xiaomi’s User Interface, MIUI. So I’m not very satisfied with the UI and I’m using the Google Now Launcher. But it’s customizability might impress you. And one good thing about MIUI is that it’s clean and doesn’t not have many pre-installed apps that eat up the memory. So that’s a plus point.

One the best things about this phone is that it has a fingerprint sensor which is pretty fast, it unlocks your device in 0.3 seconds. I compared it to iPhone 6 and it’s almost as fast. But it doesn’t work about 5% of the times.

It’s powered by Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A53 and Dual-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A72 CPU and Adreno 510 GPU and being a heavy gamer I’m quite satisfied with performance.

It offers other features too like IR Blaster and MI Drop(which is like Apple’s Air Drop).