Big, bold, and cheap to boot

Putting its faith in the future of phablets, Xiaomi is releasing the Redmi Note. The tablet/smartphone hybrid houses an octa-core processor and flaunts an attractively affordable price.

The 5.5-incher ships with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, dons a 1,280×720-pixel resolution IPS display, and will be available in a variety of colors. It only has 8GB of internal memory, but it includes a microSD card slot that’s expandable up to 32GB.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note also comes with two different sets of internal specs; one packs a 1.4GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592 processor with Mali 450 GPU and 1GB of RAM, and the other is a slight upgrade, with the same CPU and GPU, just a faster 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6592 CPU and a total of 2GB of RAM.

With dual-SIM slots, the Redmi Note phablet supports both HSPA and GSM/EDGE SIM cards. Other connectivity options include Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n.

Unlike Samsung’s Note phablet, Xiaomi’s doesn’t include a stylus, however, it offers two decent cameras — on paper. The front-facing shooter boasts 5-megapixels and the 13-megapixel rear camera features a wide angle (28mm) and LED flash — but it should perform well in low-light conditions, thanks to its f/2.2 aperture.

The pricing for the Xiaomi Redmi Note starts at around $130 and will be available on March 26 in China. There is no word on release dates for other countries.

Source: GSM Arena