Redmi Note 5


Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro are smartphones developed by Xiaomi Inc as a part of Xiaomi's budget Redmi Note smartphone series. The Redmi Note 5 Pro was announced on 14 February, 2018 in Delhi, India, alongside the local model of the Redmi Note 5, while the global Redmi Note 5 was announced on 1 March, 2018. The main difference between the Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro is a front-facing camera.

Design

The front is made of Corning Gorilla Glass, while the casing is made of aluminum with plastic stripes on top and bottom.
On the bottom of the smartphones, the user can find a microUSB port, a speaker, a microphone and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the top side, there is an additional microphone and an IR blaster. On the left side, there is a hybrid dual SIM with one slot for a Nano-SIM card and second one for a Nano-SIM tor a microSD card. On the right side, there is the volume rocker and the power button. On the back, there is the rear camera island with an LED flash, which is located, unlike its predecessors, at the top-left corner on a protruding camera bump that resembles the one present on the iPhone X, the logo, and a fingerprint reader.
Redmi Note 5 was available in 5 colors: Lake Blue, Rose Gold, Gold, Black, and Red. The most popular color was Lake Blue, which was an instant hit among the users. Red was the next best, which was introduced at a later date.

Specifications

Hardware

The Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro run on Snapdragon 636 processor. It is a 64-bit architecture-based chipset that has 8x Qualcomm® A53 CPUs with a clock speed up to 2.0 GHz that supports Qualcomm® Adreno™ 506 GPU.
The smartphones come with a 5.99-inch Full HD+ display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. The front of the smartphone has a 77% screen-to-body ratio. The screen on the device comes with multi-touch support and uses a 2.5 curved glass screen for ultra clarity. The phones have a ppt rating of 403 and a maximum resolution of 1080x2160, the LCD IPS screen allows for smooth & accurate scrolling.
The main dual-camera setup is composed by a 12 MP image sensor plus a 5 MP depth sensor used in portrait mode to have a bokeh effect in pictures. The 13-megapixel front-facing camera in the Redmi Note 5 and the 20 MP front facing camera in the Redmi Note 5 Pro feature a front LED flash rated for 4500K color temperatures as claimed by the company.
Redmi Note 5 comes with 3 GB or 4 GB RAM and 32 GB or 64 GB expandable storage memory.

Software

The Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro were released with MIUI 9, but on the Redmi Note 5 it is based on Android 7.1.2 "Nougat", while on the Redmi Note 5 it is based on Android 8.1 "Oreo". Later, the phones were updated to Android 9 "Pie", but only the Chinese version of firmware was updated to MIUI 12, while the global firmware was updated only to MIUI 11.

Features

The smartphones come with a fingerprint reader, accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, radio, and compass. The audio output includes background noise levels of -29.7 dB and crosstalk at -91.8 dB.

Reception

Redmi Note 5 received mostly positive reviews. TechRadar called it the best budget smartphone in the market and rated it 4/5. However lack of NFC and USB type C port, as well as the camera bump and inclusion of advertisements in the UI has been criticized.

Sales

On 22 February 2018, in the first sale of the phone, the Indian division of Xiaomi claimed to had sold more than 300,000 Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro units in less than three minutes and called it the biggest sale in the Indian history of smartphones.