Xiaomi’s affordable Redmi 2 smart phone is now official

Xiaomi has announced its first smart phone for the brand new year with its new Redmi 2. A new entry-level device that supports 4G LTE in both TDD/FDD that comes with dual-SIM slots. It goes on sale in China on 9th January at an affordable 699 CNY (about RM396).

While it is an all new model, the Redmi 2 retains a similar sized 4.7″ IPS HD 720p display as the previous Redmi 1S. When compared, the new model is actually thinner and lighter, and it also gets a couple of upgrades under the hood. Targeting at the youthful market, the Redmi 2 now comes with a choice of 5 colours – White, Black, Yellow, Green and Pink, though it is likely that we will only get a single colour option if it comes to Malaysia.

Powering the Redmi 2 is an updated 64-bit 1.2GHz Quad-Core Snapdragon 410 processor. The newer Cortex A53 cores claim to offer 50% performance improvement over former Cortex A7 cores that’s found on the previous 32-bit Snapdragon 400 processor. It is mated to 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM and has 8GB of on-board storage that can be expanded using microSD card. The main camera is still an 8MP f/2.2 shooter with 5-element lens while the front now comes with a higher 2MP camera that is capable of shooting HD 720p videos.

The battery has been upgraded to a slightly larger 2,200mAh battery from Samsung and it also supports QuickCharge that speeds up charging by 40%. Despite its bigger capacity battery, Xiaomi has managed to make it more compact at a lighter 133 grams with a thickness of 9.4mm. As comparison, the previous Redmi is 158 grams heavy and is thicker at 9.9mm. Out of the box, it runs on Android 4.4 with Xiaomi’s newer MIUI 6.

Take note that there are 3 variants available. Although all 3 versions support dual-SIM with 4G in both FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE standards, there’s only one which supports our local 4G Band 3/7 (1800MHz/2600MHz). For more info, you can check out Xiaomi’s Redmi 2 product page.