Xiaomi officially reveals the all-metal Redmi 3

Xiaomi have officially unveiled their Redmi lineup of budget smartphones, the Redmi 3. Sporting a metal unibody and a massive 4,100 mAh battery, the device looks be a strong contender in the budget end of the smartphone market.

The device will feature a 5″ 720p HD display with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable internal storage running MIUI 7 out of the box. That’s bordering on mid-range territory.

It will also have a hybrid SIM setup where users can choose to either run dual SIM or one SIM and a microSD card (up to 128GB) for more storage. One of its strongest selling points is the massive 4,100 mAh battery which Xiaomi says will give you an 80% improvement in talk time duration compared to its predecessor. Despite all that extra battery capacity though, it is thinner than the Redmi 2, coming in at just 8.5mm and weighing only 144g. Besides that the battery also supports 5V/2A fast charging so you can top it up in a jiffy.

All of the internals will be housed inside a full-metal body — a first for the Redmi line — that has an all-new lattice design made up of 4,166 stars woven together to reflect an arrangement of diamonds. From the images, it certainly looks pretty good.

Camera wise, the device will sport a 13-megapixel f/2.0 rear shooter with phase detection autofocus (PDAF) which Xiaomi quotes will give you a fast autofocus time of 0.1 seconds. Selfies, on the other hand, will be taken care of by a 5MP f/2.2 snapper at the front.

The Redmi 3 will be available in three fashion colours — fashion gold, fashion silver and fashion grey — plus a classic gold colour and will be priced at RMB699 (around RM470), which is the same price in RMB as the Redmi 2 before it. It will go on sale in China tomorrow (12 January 2016) on Mi.com and Tmall. The device is already on display at Mi.com’s product page.

We do hope that this device will come to Malaysia within the next few months which has been the trend for Xiaomi devices. Perhaps this will come with it’s bigger brother the Redmi Note 3? What do you think of this all-metal budget device?