Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T
Low-cost phone with upmarket appeal
Apple makes its smartphones in China, and rakes in billions of dollars by charging prices for them that give it a nice big profit margin. That’s great if you’re an Apple shareholder, but if you’re buying an iphone it means you’re only paying some of your money for the phone, and the rest for Apple CEO Tim Cook to add to the firm’s cash reserves.
Xiaomi, based in China, makes its own smartphones, with no American partners to draw fruit logos on them, and has a rule that it only takes a margin of five per cent. And Redmi is its budget brand. So if you were looking for a smartphone bargain, you’re in the right place.
Available in shiny dark grey or iridescent white or blue, the Note 8T is prettier than a low-end device has any right to be.
With five cameras, good processing power and battery life, this is a bargain
On the front is a big, sharp IPS LCD screen, with a ‘hole punch’ selfie camera at the top centre, which covers 96 per cent of SRGB, according to our meter, with strong contrast and sunlight-beating brightness under Gorilla Glass.
On the back is a fingerprint reader, which enables Google Pay as well as quick unlocking, and another four cameras. Yes, four. One of the cameras is, as usual, just a depth sensor for the obligatory blurred-background portrait effect. The main lens, with a wide f/1.8 aperture to grab lots of light, uses a 48-megapixel sensor to capture clear
SPECIFICATIONS
6.3in 2340x1080-pixel screen • Four rear cameras • 13-megapixel front camera • 64GB flash storage • microsd slot • USB-C port • 3.5mm audio jack • 802.11ac Wi-fi • Bluetooth 4.2 • 3G/4G • 161x75.4x8.6mm (HXWXD) • 200g • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/33949 12-megapixel images. Then there’s an 8-megapixel f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle lens (‘wide’ here in the different sense of fitting a bigger scene into the picture). And finally, there’s a 2-megapixel macro lens, which, although a bit low-res, does a nice job of extreme close-ups.
Results aren’t up to the professional photo standards of something like the Google Pixel 3a, but then that’s twice the price (and it’s still only a midrange phone). The 3a also has more graphics processing power for smooth 3D gaming, but for general tasks the Note 8T’s Snapdragon 665 processor is just as fast. At just under 15 hours in our video playback test, battery life isn’t far behind either. The only thing missing, in fact, is a catch.