The Chinese market is home to a plethora of excellent Android phones that sell for competitive prices, and on January 10, Xiaomi announced its latest offering in the form of the Redmi Note 7.
Before we talk too much about the phone, the Redmi Note 7 is important as it's the first device to be released by the newly independent Redmi brand. Xiaomi's used Redmi branding on a number of its phones for the past few years, but similar to the Poco brand that popped up last year with the Pocophone F1, Redmi will now exist as its own standalone thing.
Per Xiaomi's Founder, President, and CEO, Mr. Lei Jun:
As at 30 September 2018, Xiaomi had sold a total of 278 million Redmi series smartphones globally. We successfully invited Mr. Lu Weibing, the former president of Gionee, to be Vice President of Xiaomi Corporation and General Manager of the Redmi brand. His rich experience will assist Redmi to penetrate foreign markets faster and capture opportunities for further development and expansion. Redmi will continue to focus on research and development of extremely cost-effective smartphones with superior quality, and accelerate the pace of global expansion!
As for the Redmi Note 7 itself, it has a 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 660 is powering the handset, and around back you'll find an impressive 48MP + 5MP dual camera combo.
Other notable features include a 13MP front-facing camera, 4,000 mAh battery, Qualcomm QuickCharge 4.0, AI face unlock, an IR blaster, and USB-C for charging. All of this is offered in a glass + metal body with striking color options, and even more impressive, the Redmi Note 7 is the first smartphone to be launched in the Chinese mainland with an 18-month warranty.
If you're interested, preorders for the Redmi Note 7 open today and it'll hit store shelves on January 15 with a starting price of RMB 999 (about $150 USD) for 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. More expensive models with 4 and 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage will be offered, too.
