REDMI 1S REVIEW:

The Redmi 1S, I guess most of you might have heard about this device. You would be thinking why the hell am I posting about the Redmi 1S so late. The reason is pretty simple, it went on sale on 2nd September 2014 in India via Flipkart. The stock had only 40,000 pieces and almost 2,00,000 people registered for the Flash Sale. It went out of stock within 4.2s and one needs superhuman reflexes to buy it. { I am lucky, I have superhuman reflexes} :)

So I ordered it and the phone didn't ship. One week passed and finally the phone shipped and took 3 days to reach my place. So here's a spec rundown:
Screen: 4.7inches with a 720p resolution
Processor: 1.6Ghz quad-core Snapdragon 400
Graphics: Adreno 305
RAM: 1GB
Storage: 8GB Internal and supports microSD upto 64GB.
Camera: 8MP Rear Camera and  a 1.6MP Front Camera.
Battery: 2050 mAh

So is the device worth the trouble and wait ??? Lets find out.

Build: The one thing that came into my mind after holding the device for the 1st time was that "It's heavy and weighs almost equal to the One M8", well that's a good thing and the device feels solid.
The 2nd thing that caught my attention were the RED navigation buttons. I just love the black and red combination and anything that has a black n red combination wins my heart..
The device feel pretty strong and is well build all around. The ports, buttons all feel sturdy and the Metal Gray color adds a premium feel to the device. Considering the price i.e. Rs5999 (Approx $98) {Less than half the price of the Moto G 2nd Gen} the build quality is wonderful and hats off to Xiaomi they nailed it.

The Metal Gray shade with the classy MI logo

The buttons feel great and offer great feedback. Impressed !

The front with the lovely RED navigation buttons

Performace: The Snapdragon 400 clocked at 1.6ghz performs very well and is capable enough to handle almost any task we throw at it easily. But the bottleneck is created because of the 1GB Ram and one may face a little lag or slowdown and sometimes a 3-4s delay in opening up of an app in the Play Store. This maybe because of the device running Android 4.3 with the MIUI skin on top of it.
The device is cable enough to play most of the recent games easily and performs great. Maybe a software update would fix the few issues that I encountered but these issues do not affect the overall usability of the device. In short it performs great or should I say way better than the other budget competition out there..

Battery Life: The 2050mAh battery is very capable. It performs great and gets the phone though a day of moderate use easily. It gives around 4-4.5h of screen-on time with moderate usage. So the battery life of the phone is great and yeah another plus point the battery is removable, so you can carry an additional battery on road trips etc and stay connected for even longer.

Storage: The phone has 8GB of internal storage and the user gets around 6GB of storage but the device supports microSD card upto 64GB and it even supports OTG. So storage is no big issue at all.

Usability: The MIUI rom is very famous for its customization capabilities and ease of use and as the device runs the MIUI rom {Android 4.3 right now, will be updated soon}it's ease of use is nothing to talk about. However there are a few apps that come preinstalled and are in Chinese so I was unable to understand them and sometimes they would send some notifications in Chinese but the plus point here is that the user can uninstall them if he/she wants. The experience is really charming and if you want to try the ROM out, well there are a lot of tutorials out there on how to flash different custom roms.  So you can give it a try if you want but the risk is all yours.

Here are a few screens of the UI:

                         
                         

Running Android 4.3

The general settings

The quick settings.

Camera: The 8MP primary camera performs great, way better than most budget devices out there and a lot better than the 5MP disaster on the 1st Gen Moto G. Considering the price point i.e Rs 5,999 or $98 which is almost half of the Moto G and a little cheaper than the Moto E I'd say Motorola needs to learn. Who the hell says you cant get a front camera on such a low priced device because it didn't fit the budget {Pointing towards the MOTO E}. Xiaomi managed to get a 8MP rear facing camera with LED Flash and a 1.6MP front camera, Motorola should learn. Well sorry I went a little off topic... Now back to the camera performance, the front facing camera is good enough for selfies and video calls. The camera performance is great GOOD WORK Xiaomi !!

Overall Experience:
Simply beautiful, it's almost the perfect smartphone. It performs great, it's built beautifully, has a beautiful screen and is backed up by great developer support. There are a few shortcomings like the occasional lag etc but they do not affect the overall usability and I guess will be fixed up soon when the next update hits the device. So in my view the device is way better than the competition out there (I guess you'll understand who i'm pointing towards).

Pros:
1) Great display.
2) Performs great.
3) Nice camera.
4) Great battery life.
5) Killer pricing.

Cons:
1)After Sales / Service Center.
2) Troublesome process for purchasing the device. + Long wait.

But in the end all that I have to say is this device is the new BUDGET KING and there's no competition in it's way. Xiaomi you nailed it and anyone who's looking for a new device and has a tight budget then this is the one android phone that isn't crappy and is a total bang for the bucks.


But yeah I'm eagerly waiting for the Android One devices which are expected this October. Feel free to share this post and leave a comment in the comment section below. Enjoy :)

Posted in Android, Redmi 1S, Review, Xiaomi