Xiaomi has had a great run since it launched in India last June. While its entry level Redmi 1S was well received in India, it was discontinued towards the end of last year to help concentrate on Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G. Considering Lenovo had already announced the A6000 at CES (and released it in India in February) and the Moto E (2015) was released earlier last month, it was a matter of time before we saw Xiaomi Redmi 2.
Design:
The Xiaomi
Redmi 2 is an upgrage to last year’s Redmi 1S and in terms of looks, not much
has changed. Xiaomi has
employed a matte-finish plastic back on the Redmi 2. The rear cover is made of
flimsy plastic, but it is comparatively sturdier than that seen on the Lenovo
A6000. The rear cover opens up to reveal the removable battery section and the
dual SIM card slot along with a microSD card slot. On the right hand side, you have a
volume rocker and power/standby button whereas the left hand side edge is
clean. On top, you have the 3.5mm audio jack and at the base you have the
microUSB charging and data transfer port. There is the audio-speaker section on the top beside which
you have the proximity sensor and the 2MP front camera. On the rear side there
is an 8MP camera with the LED flash unit on the left hand side and a speaker
section on the right hand side. It measures 9.4mm thick and weighs around 133g.
The overall build quality is quite good and the matte finish on the rear cover
gives a good grip.
Features:
Xiaomi Redmi
2 features a slight upgrade from its predecessor. The phone is powered by a
Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC which has a 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex A53 processor
along with Adreno 306GPU. This is paired with 1GB of RAM and has 8GB of
internal storage. Xiaomi plans to release a 16GB internal storage and 2GB RAM
variant of the Redmi 2 later this year. It sports a 4.7-inch HD display with
Corning Gorilla Glass 2 protection.
The Redmi 2
comes with a dual SIM configuration with dual 4G SIM standby. This gives it an
edge over the Lenovo A6000 where you can only use one 4G SIM at a time. Other
connectivity features include Wi-fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-fi Direct, Bluetooth v4.0
LE and GPS with A-GPS / GLONASS and Beidou. Sensors such as accelerometer,
gyroscope, proximity sensor and compass are also present on board.
On the OS
front, you get Android 4.4.4 KitKat OS with the MIUI 6.0 skin on top, just like
Xiaomi Mi 4. An 8MP camera is present on the rear side along with a 2MP
front-facing camera. The camera claims to have a 1.4micrometer pixel size. We
will see if that helps with the image quality in the camera section below.
The phone
has a 2,200mAh Li-Polymer battery which is removable. Sensors such as
accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor and compass are present on the Redmi
2.
Software:
The Xiaomi
Redmi 2 launched with the MIUI 6 OS atop the Android 4.4.4 KitKat OS. Now this
skin is Xiaomi’s latest update and brings in a lot of design changes along with
some improved experience as well. But for someone familiar with the iOS design
philosophy, the MIUI 6 skin seems to have take a lot of ‘inspiration’. For instance, the music and video
apps are neatly divided into local and cloud sections; the clock app has a new
design which is again divided into alarm, stopwatch, timer and clock; weather
app has beautiful data visualisation; the Security app is neatly divided into
different sections such as cleaner, data usage, blocklist and so on. There is a
nice toggle button to switch a setting on or off.
Notifications can show up on the lock screen as well as when you pull down the notification tray. The notification tray when pulled down will show two pages – one showing the quick settings menu and the other page showing the unattended notifications. The quick notifications screen with its transparent backdrop looks inspired by iOS’s pull up control centre. Instead of getting a notification icon from the app, you can now get three dots which is common for all the unimportant notifications. You can control which notifications should show up as important by going into Settings > Notifications > Manage Notifications.
The Mail app
has also been redesigned. One of the key features includes the layout of
threaded email conversations which actually appears like chat messages. Other
proprietary apps include the Mi Account, Security, Themes, Music and so on.
MIUI 6
allows you to easily switch apps between screens. You can actually hold onto an
app by one finger while swiping the screen by the other finger. You add on
widgets, change transition effects and so on. The camera app has also under
gone a redesign, but we will take a look at it under the camera section. The
browser has also got a new look.
Performance:
Since it houses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC, its immediate competitors include the Lenovo A6000 and the Huawei Honor 4X. The benchmark scores are at par with the Lenovo A6000 and Honor 4X in the balanced mode and slightly higher in the Performance mode.
The Redmi 2 comes with the MIUI 6 skin atop the Android 4.4.4 OS but I did not notice any lag/stutter while using the phone. Switching between apps, swiping and scrolling operations are smooth. With image heavy sites, there will be a mild stutter as the image is loading. Call quality is good and earpiece speaker is loud enough.
Audio
quality is good and you can easily listen to audio on the speaker section in
your living room. Gaming on the phone is fun and there was barely any stutter
while playing games such as Fruit Ninja, Riptide GP2 as well as high end games
such as Frontline Commando 2 and Asphalt 8 as well. The phone does get warm on
the rear side while you are playing games.
Display:
As a result
of a 4.7-inch IPS display with an HD resolution, you get a high pixel density
312PPI. Text appears sharp and even on close distance I did not notice any
pixellation. Colours are vibrant, but there is a mild warm tinge on the Redmi
2. The auto-brightness feature works well in when you are outdoors. It gives
great viewing angles and only the reflective surface is distracting when viewed
from angles. While watching movies, the dark scenes make the reflective surface
of the display quite evident as it acts as a mirror then. Bright scenes did not
post any issue.
Camera:
Xiaomi Redmi
2 comes with an 8MP rear camera and a 2MP front-facing camera, with the rear
camera having a sensor with pixel size of 1.4 micrometer. Having seen a lot of
entry level phones with high megapixel count, I didn’t really expect much from
the Redmi 2’s camera. But it is quite decent for an entry level phone. It comes
with the same minimal user interface that was there on the Mi 4. Swiping right
brings up the various filters and swiping left throws up options such as
Panorama mode, HDR mode, Manual mode and so on.
Battery
life:
Battery
capacity has been bumped up from 2,000mAh on the Redmi 1S to 2,200mAh on the
Redmi 2. In the 8-hour loop test which includes two hours each of calling,
video streaming, video playback and audio playback simulating an 8 hour work
day, the Redmi 2 was left with 33 per cent battery remaining in the Performance
mode. This means that the phone will easily last you for a day on regular usage
and maybe even more.
