It wasn’t long ago when Xiaomi launched its mid-range Redmi Note 5 family here in India. The Redmi 5 Plus earlier launched in China was brought to India as the Redmi Note 5, while the Redmi Note 5 Pro was a new device altogether. Now, the Redmi Note 5 Pro is making its way to China and is being rebranded as the Redmi Note 5. Not just the name, Xiaomi has also made the device a tad better by bringing an improved camera setup and some new software additions.
While the basic set of specifications remains to be the same, what changed is the aperture of the device’s primary rear camera. The Indian version came with a camera sensor sporting an f/2.2 aperture, but the Chinese variant has got a wider f/1.9 aperture. In addition to the aperture, the pixel size has also been increased to 1.4μm compared to 1.25μm in the Indian variant, besides a new dual pixel PDAF system for faster focus speeds.
The secondary camera remains to be the same 5MP sensor on the Indian variant. However, the 20MP selfie camera sensor has been replaced with a 13MP sensor on the Chinese variant. Moreover, all the new cameras also get enhanced AI based features including portrait mode and face unlock. The Redmi Note 5 launched in China supports Quick Charge 3.0 against Quick Charge 2.0 in India and it also gets VoLTE support for both the SIM cards.
In the software department too, the variant announced in China comes running Android 8.1 Oreo with MIUI 9 out of the box, whereas India got the device with Android 7.1.1 Nougat. This also means that the Chinese variant supports Project Treble meaning faster Android updates. The pricing, however, is a tad lower in India than the phones launch price in China. Xiaomi has priced the Redmi Note 5 at 1,099 CNY ($174/₹11,276) for the base variant with 3GB RAM, 1,399 CNY ($221/₹14,381) for the 4GB RAM variant, and 1,699 CNY ($268/₹17,465) for the 6GB RAM variant, which costs ₹16,999 in India.
Also Read: Xiaomi Redmi 5 launched in India starting at Rs. 7,999, available from March 20
Most of the other specifications have stayed unchanged including the octa-core Snapdragon 636 processor with Adreno 509 GPU. The Redmi Note 5 sports a 5.99-inch 18:9 display with a resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. It has a 4,000mAh battery along with a fingerprint scanner on the back and an IR blaster on the top. The top two variants of the device with 4GB and 6GB of RAM capacity get 64GB of internal memory, while the 3GB RAM variant gets 32GB of internal memory, both of which can be expanded using the hybrid SIM card slot.
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