(QNA) Redmi Note 3 - Reviews and Discussions

Got my redmi note 3 and heres the review of the pros and the cons . Ill split the review into sections and yes this is initial reviews and please do let me know if u guys have anything to share . Also note that im coming from Sony Xperia Z Ultra so that a few points maybe directly compared or form the basis of comparison though ill keep it neutral as far as possible

Build Quality :

Premium build quality . Yes if u compare it with Letv le 1s ( though i dont own the device ) I feel Letv wins on this part. But do note that this is a really premium device and for the price range its one of the best. The all metal body and the anodized metal feel make it feel a beauty to hold and yes the curved sides do make it alot easy to hold than my previous device which was a mammoth 6.4 inch giant and had a brick form factor though thinner than redmi note 3.

Also even though the device maybe 169 grams it doesnt feel too heavy in the hands. I leave the Z ultra because u can compare an apple with a watermelon . So got out an old htc one x which i assume weighs less than the redmi but the redmi feel lighter than it hands down because of the weight distribution. For nexus 4 i felt nexus was lighter by a small margin whereas my mother differed .

Heating:

When i got the box today evening the piece was itself a bit hot . It may have been soaking all the heat through the whole day. I havent played games and stuff on the phone but ran antutu a couple of times . My scores are around the 72.5 mark for the 16gb/2gb gold variant and yes it got warm after 2 tests but its not an omelette cooking device . Its the warmth u can easily take . HD gaming of 15 to 30 mins may heat ur device but as per other reviewers its less than 45C which considered fairly good

Screen

The screen is a beauty at this price range. Even with the hazy scratch guard preinstalled on the phone looks a stunner at the default brightness level . Unfortunately couldnt test out the sunlight display but apart from it the looks are stunner . Ill need to remove the preinstalled hay scratch guard to better gauge the display colors and vividness

Camera

Front cam : I was pretty impressed with the selfies on the device . Im not a avid photographer but I guess other guys may help out with that part . for the back camera could capture the photos only in artificial and low light conditions and the photos are just average . But heard outdoor shoots come out well from other reviews .if cam is the most important aspect and more so taking low light pics then it’s better u give this device s skip . the beautify settings work out well for the selfies as such I feel .

1 negative is the ability to take selfies and pics with fingerprint scanner .Hugo promised this feature and demoed it on both front and back cams but seems the feature is missing at the moment in the stable build

Fingerprint scanner

Wow works well really well . have already got used to ditching the power button. Accuracy is achieved by adding the sides of ur fingers and tips so that wherever u hit it will be a bulls eye 9 out of 10 secs

Another negative is the ability to lock apps using fingerprint . Hugo again stated it will ship in the first lot of phones but till now I cannot find the trace of using fingerprint. Only normal pattern lock works

Audio & Call Quality

Audio from headset jack is what has surprised me the most about the handset. Combined with tekfusion twinwoofers it is a pair made in heaven . Just to compare that even at half of xiaomis full volume the headphones sounded much more richer and louder than that at almost the full volume of Sony z ultra . Reminded me of my nexus 4 where I would get a similar using tons of audio mods combined with v4a viper for Android

Speakers is loud enough and the bump in the back tends to prevent the voice distorting when placed on a flat surface. Nothing to brag on about the speakers

Audio quality is top notch. The front speakers gave an amazing voice clarity dint have the chance to be on the other side but yaa a friend said it sounded a bit better . maybe a false positive but non the less .

One thing is volte and someone in review already pointed that out

Being on call quality I found a rather annoying bug maybe either only constrained to my unit or as a whole . if u power off and reboot or directly reboot the sim doesn’t get activated for around a minute after boot is completed . misunderstood that the sim was not being detected only to later realize it is detecting a bit slow on boot-up .Tried only 2 or 3 times till now but same results

To test further . once the sim got connected removed the sim card with phone on and then reentered the tray and it got signal immediately. So it’s something related to first boot itself

Battery life & Battery

Couldn’t run a full battery life test .In my first 4 hours of usage 2 hrs sot was achieved and battery dropped from around 45 to 22 so take this as a super battery phone. I was literally waiting for the low battery indicator to pop up so that I could keep the phone on charge

Now an interesting thing is that this battery takes around 2.3 to 3 hrs to charge as per the reviews . I dint put it through a complete charge cycle but really dont know how and what type of quick charging functionality is built in. Whether it is QC 1.0 or 2.0 . The charger model is MDY-08-EB manufactured by Dongguan Aohai Power Technology . While wasnt able to find any references to the exact model in even some chinese ecomm websites found an article on miui that model MDY-08-EF another model from xioami is QC 2.0 certified .

I was using the phone heavily while charging with primary usuage of whatsapp,gmail and chrome and yes the phone heated up a bit but it was not like ooch ill burn my hand .

Ui & RAM management

Nothing to say about miui .custom ROM nerds may have installed it at some point of time . Has tons of customization’s and frankly reduces the need for putting custom roms since way too many features are taken from the numerous aosp rom developers .

The 2gigs variant has around 750 to 800 MB free .thanks to all the bloated miui version since they have so many customization’s and literally all apps including a scanner app . With heavy multitasking the RAM may fall around 400 to 450 levels but needless to say we shouldn’t worry about RAM . Android has made strides in memory management over the years . At the most I had micro second stutters once or twice but you can expect and ignore it for its skin is really heavy .

Infrared sensor

Mi remote app
Works in a cool way with my lg smart TV . I don’t know if all the keys work but yes power on off volume do the rest I use a Videocon stb so can’t comment .

for the stb I was disappointed to see my Videocon stb not in the list and it had all Chinese names . I assumed that mi explorers had helped build the mi remote app so I thought it would have Tata sky and Videocon already set . but it’s not . anyways seems we would get it in near future . will still have to confirm if third party apps work .Someone in his review mentioned peel a third party app to be working .

GPS

It’s quick and locks quickly .dint do any tests just opened gmaps and let it to locate me and it locked in quite fast .
Tested the gps indoors today with only device mode and unfortunately the gps is not the best atleast indoors. Had to move near the window to get it locked .Once at window it was able to decide my location quickly.

Other sensors

Dint check gyroscope and other sensors as of now .it’s on the to do list of tomorrow

Capacitative buttons

Being from old school stock Android I don’t like the capacitative buttons . And having the reverse key makes me fumble still . But I think the miui would have an option somewhere to switch keys .

Yaa one more thing is the vibrating sensor .it’s strong for even the light mode.

Themes

Amazing variety to choose from nothing much to say

Gaming

Not a gamer sorry cannot tell u the gaming performance.

Anything left to review

You say me

A consised pro con tommorow sometime . Let me have some sleep now

Sorry will tag the interested dimers and create a new thread tommorow

Pardon typos typing from redmi note 3