Xiaomi, the fast-growing Chinese technology conglomerate which earned a name selling durable and powerful smartphones, tablets and other gadgets at insanely cheap price points, today at an event in China announces two new smartphones and a major update to its Android based ROM. The company today launches the Redmi Note 2 and the Redmi Note 2 Prime.
The successor to the company's fast-selling Redmi Note phablet, the Redmi Note 2 is Xiaomi's latest take to the increasingly competitive smartphone market. The Redmi Note 2 sports a 5.5-inch FHD display and costs just RMB 799 ($125).
Other features of the device include a 64-bit capable MediaTek Helio X10 octa-core chipset clocked at 2GHz (which incidentally is the same SoC that HTC supplied in its $800 One M9+ smartphone). The phone comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage. It supports Wi-Fi, 3G, and Bluetooth for connectivity options. The company has also launched an FDD-LTE capable variant of the Redmi Note 2 which is priced at RMB 899 ($140).
The Redmi Note 2 Prime is a refined version of the Redmi Note 2 with slightly better hardware specifications. For instance, it comes the Helio X10 processor which is clocked at 2.2GHz. Additionally, you also get a 32GB internal storage. It is priced at around $155.
All three devices come with a 13-megapixel camera at the back, and a 5-megapixel sensor placed upfront. They all have the same 3,060mAh battery. The devices also comes with infrared support for universal remote compatibility with a number of compliances.
On the software front, they run on MIUI 7. MIUI 7 is the latest update to Xiaomi's Android-based ROM. The ROM has been updated to bring in improvements to the user interface, support for facial recognition technology in photos, a “unique” roaming app to support virtual network when you're out of your home nation (or state), and a bunch of new themes. MIUI 7 is based on Android 5.1.
Xiaomi says that the facial recognition technology will make it possible for the phone to automatically sort out similar images. For instance, if you have taken a plenty of images of your cat, the phone will arrange all its pictures in a different folder. The update will begin to rollout to a range of Xiaomi devices later this week in China, which will be followed by global rollout in the coming weeks.
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