Xiaomi Redmi 3

The Redmi 3 is a 5in budget smartphone from Chinese phone maker Xiaomi, and not officially sold in the UK.

Price

If you do want to get your hands on a Xiaomi Redmi 3 in the UK, you’ll need to pick one up from a third-party grey-market site such as GearBest (gearbest.com), which supplied our sample for review. It charges £114.95 with free shipping to the UK for the 16GB Redmi 3, but you should note that all phones shipped from China to the UK are liable for import duty. Not all parcels will be pulled by customs, but if yours is then you must pay the charge.

Redmi 3 vs Redmi Note 3

Xiaomi products aren’t officially sold in the UK, and as such us Brits aren’t very well accustomed to how its naming schemes work. Redmi is the company’s budget line-up, while Mi is its flagship range. So this Redmi 3 sits below the plastic Xiaomi Mi 4c (the upgraded Mi 4i), though it isn’t simply a compact version of the Redmi Note 3 phablet.

There’s not a huge deal of difference in the pricing of these two Xiaomi phones, with the Redmi 3 costing £114.95 and the Note 3 £128.53, both from GearBest. But almost everything else is different.

The most obvious differences are in the build. The Xiaomi Note 3 is a gorgeous and smooth fully metal phablet with a large 5.5in full-HD panel and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. By comparison, the Redmi 3 is a part-metal, partplastic phone with a diamondpatterned rear, a 5in HD screen, no fingerprint scanner and a single LED flash in place of the Note 3’s two.

Inside the differences continue. Xiaomi’s Note 3 is powered by an octa-core Helio X10 chip with PowerVR G6200 graphics and 2GB of RAM, while the 2GB Redmi 3 is fitted with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 and Adreno 405 graphics. Both feature 16GB of storage, but only the Redmi 3 has a microSD slot for up to 128GB of additional storage.

One thing the two Xiaomi phones have in common is large-capacity batteries. With 4000mAh inside the Note 3 and a surprisingly huge 4100mAh inside the Redmi 3, battery life is a key selling point for the cheaper phone.

You usually get what you pay for and, as we’ll discover in this review, that’s very much the case with the Xiaomi Redmi 3 and Redmi Note 3. We’d recommend the Note 3 over the Redmi 3, but fans of smallerscreen phones or those on a tighter budget or with a need for microSD support might prefer to check out this cheaper Redmi 3.

Design

The first thing you’ll notice about the Redmi 3 when taking it out the box is that this is a plasticky feeling phone, which is these days the warning call of a cheap phone. The top and bottom rear panels are plastic, while it’s actually quite difficult to tell whether the middle panel is plastic or metal (it’s metal) because it is so thin and plasticky feeling. The other telltale sign is its width, and this 8.5mm smartphone is about average for the price.

The design is pleasant though, with a diamond-patterned rear case and a chrome-effect metal trim around the screen that at least from the front makes it look similar to its bigger brother. Thanks to its 5in screen it fits comfortably in the hand, and we absolutely can’t argue with its build quality – this phone feels and looks well made. There’s no creaking, no flexing, no sharp edges and no gaping holes.

A camera and single-LED flash lie flush with the phone’s case at the top left corner on the rear. Down the bottom you find a speaker grille, with a small plastic lip intended to raise it from the desk. The setup is otherwise pretty standard for an Android phone, with volume and power buttons on the right edge, Micro-USB at the bottom and a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top.

A SIM tray pops out from the left edge of the Xiaomi Redmi 3,