INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The budget segment is usually where smartphone companies move the most volume, and in order to maintain its dominance, Xiaomi recently
launched not one but three new budget Redmi smartphones
while the Redmi 6 Pro does have the strongest SoC of the new trio, the main differentiating factor for this model seems to be its notched
This is also a first for a Redmi phone
table We're about to find out.Xiaomi Redmi 6 Pro designBeing the most premium phone of the new Redmi 6 family, the Redmi 6 Pro has been
given somewhat better materials, in the form of a metal backplate
The buttons have good feedback without being noisy, and on the left side, you get a single tray which can hold two SIM cards and a separate
Something worth noting is that the Redmi 6 Pro does not support dual 4G VoLTE, which means that only one SIM can connect to a 4G network at
a time.The placement of ports is good
The mono speaker is on the bottom right, so chances of blocking it when using the phone in landscape mode are slim
The headphone socket is placed on the top, and you also get an infrared (IR) emitter which can be used to control IR appliances through the
You can also buy the Redmi 6 Pro in blue, red, or gold
The fingerprint sensor is easy to reach and is responsive
The contrast and brightness are adequate
The notch results in a bit more display area, but it's pretty massive
The other borders around the panel are also still very thick, including a fat chin at the bottom
This is one of the least attractive notch designs we've come across
Also, Xiaomi has for some reason found a really awkward spot for the notification LED - the bottom left portion of the chin - despite there
seemingly being plenty of free space in the notch.In the box, the Redmi 6 Pro ships with a clear case, a SIM eject tool, a USB cable, and a
now but is still a capable chip for general tasks
Our unit was running on a pre-release version of its MIUI software, which prevented us from running most benchmarks
Xiaomi did confirm with us that other than this, the software is identical to what retail units will ship with
The phone supports Bluetooth 4.2, dual-band 802.11 Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, GPS, USB-OTG, and GLONASS
which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo
The Redmi 6 series will be updated to MIUI 10 soon, according to Xiaomi.MIUI offers gestures and customisable functions that are similar to
The leftmost home screen gives you a card-style layout for app shortcuts, stock prices, calendar events, etc
The Mi Store app gives you a curated list of apps and games from the Play Store, but it also sends annoying spammy notifications now and
The same goes for the Mi Community app, but at least this can be uninstalled
The phone comes with several preinstalled apps for social networking, banking, video streaming, and browsing the Web.For navigating Android,
you can either stick with the default three-button system, or switch to gestures
These work quite well, and we ended up using them a lot, but we did face one issue
This means that when you try to access the menus in apps like Slack with the same gesture, you end up closing the app or going a step back
We saw portions of some menu buttons and even content in some apps getting cut off due to the masking
Face recognition is supported, and it works well under most lighting conditions, except in a pitch darkness.The Redmi 6 Pro is not
Despite having 4GB of RAM, we did notice that load times in games were a bit long, and multitasking between apps wasn't always stutter-free
We found that colours were vivid and punchy on the Redmi 6 Pro's screen, which makes this a good device for watching videos.Audio
The stock music player has Hungama Music integration, and lets you stream audio tracks
your local files.The rear 12-megapixel camera has an f/2.2 aperture with PDAF
Autofocus was decently quick in good light
We observed good detail in landscape shots in daylight, and colours were pleasing too
The main sensor stumbled a bit with macros, as it simply wasn't able to resolve finer detail
The white balance was a bit of a hit or a miss in close-ups, and we often found ourselves having to tap-to-focus to get the white balance
speed dropped quite a bit, and it took longer to save regular images as well
Details were quite mushy due to the noise reduction process, and colours were a bit dull.The camera app is simple and easy to use, with all
the shooting modes just a swipe away
Portrait mode takes advantage of the secondary 5-megapixel camera on the back
However, edge detection was quite average, and we couldn't adjust the level of blur before or after taking a shot
The 5-megapixel front camera took okay selfies under good light, but due to the lack of screen flash, low-light images turned out
grainy.Video performance was quite decent, and stabilisation worked well, with no visible jelly effect around the edges of the frame
The maximum resolution you can shoot at is 1080p.Battery life is one of the strong suits of the Redmi 6 Pro
The 4000mAh battery easily lasted us a full day and a bit more on one charge
Playing heavy games didn't drain the battery too much either
In a single round of PUBG (around 30 minutes), in which we survived till the very end, we recorded a drop of around seven percent, which is
In our internal video loop test, we got a runtime of 16 hours and 45 minutes, which is very good
make a very strong case for itself
1,000 less for the same amount of RAM and storage
compromise a bit on the display and battery capacity
What Xiaomi has essentially done here is create a bit of confusion in its own lineup.However, notches seem to be in demand these days, so we
can see buyers considering this option for that reason alone
