Xiaomi, which is now India’s largest smartphone brand seems to be on overdrive these days. After a small lull period during which everyone thought Xiaomi was a bit too complacent, the company has announced – and have come up with several compelling new products that should help them maintain their number one position in India going forward. These new products include the soon-to-be-launched Redmi Note 7 series and the new foldable smartphone that was showcased by none other than Xiaomi’s co-founder Lin Bin in a recent video. Today, though, we will talk about a new smartphone that Xiaomi is likely to launch in India in the next few weeks. This new smartphone is known as the Xiaomi Redmi Go, and we now have almost all the details about this new device except for its launch price thanks to the eagle-eyed folks at Philippine tech blog Revu and very own our desi leaker Ishan Agarwal.
Let’s now check out what the Redmi Go is all about.
Xiaomi Redmi Go: What do we know about this phone so far?
As mentioned earlier, the full spec sheet and images of the Redmi Go were spotted online by folks from over at Revu. Ishan Agarwal subsequently posted images of the device in a tweet.
Here's your first look at the Xiaomi Redmi Go, the upcoming Android Go Smartphone. Click on the images below to see full resolution renders and full specs of the upcoming smartphone, launching soon in India! (First spotted by https://t.co/Jha1L96xJX ).#RedmiGO#Redmi#Xiaomi pic.twitter.com/nf6LX4yAOP
— Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) January 24, 2019
As evident from the images, the Redmi Go is an entry-level device from Xiaomi that will be positioned below the likes of the Redmi 6A and the Redmi 6 here in India. The design and styling of the Redmi Go are reminiscent of older Redmi devices. The handset will also run Android Go – a stripped down, basic version of Android custom designed for mobile phones with entry-level hardware. Let us now take a closer look at the specifications of the phone.
Xiaomi Redmi Go: Specifications, Features
As the norm is, we will start with the display. The Xiaomi Redmi Go features a 5-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. As you might have noticed, this display is in the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio. This display boasts of a maximum brightness score of 380 nits and a contrast ratio of 1000:1.
The Redmi Go is powered by the entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 chipset that houses ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at up to 1.4GHz. For graphics, the phone gets the Adreno 308 GPU. The most disappointing part, however, is that the phone comes with just 1 GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Both these aspects are too low for this time and age. Thankfully, there is a MicroSD card slot for additional memory. That being said, with such barebones specs, the phone should be priced well below the INR 5,000 mark.
The Redmi Go uses an 8-megapixel primary camera at the rear with f/2.0 aperture and support for HDR and flash. At the front, the phone gets a 5-megapixel f.2.2 shooter. While it is not clear if the phone supports dual VoLTE networks, the spec sheet does mention support for VoLTE networks. Connectivity options and band support happen to be pretty comprehensive for a device of its class.
The phone supports the following bands:
- GSM: B2, B3, B5, B8
- WCDMA: Bl, B2, B4*, B5, B8
- TDD-LTE: B38*, B40, B41(120MHz)
- FDD-LTE: 01, B2*, B3, B4*, B5, 07*, B8, 020*, B28*
The Redmi Go is a dual SIM handset with a triple-slot design which means you can use the SD card slot independently of the SIM cards. The device also supports Wi-Fi 2.4GHz, 802.11 b/g/n as well as Bluetooth 4.1, and Micro USB, USB 2.0.
The Redmi Go is a compact device by today’s standard but still crams in a 3000 mAh battery and comes with a 5V, 1A charger inside the box. As mentioned earlier in this vertu article, the phone runs Android 8.1 Oreo – albeit in its stripped down Android Go avatar. The phone will be available in black and blue color options when launched.
