Does Xiaomi have another hit in its hands?

While Xiaomi’s mid-range and flagship phones have always managed to hog the limelight, their budget offerings in their Redmi lineup make up a large majority of the company’s user base. Xiaomi has made life particularly difficult for budget brands in the sub 10K segment thanks to their aggressively priced Redmi 5A. In fact, the Redmi 5A was so popular, it was crowned as the world’s best selling Android phone in the first quarter of 2018.

Today we’ll be taking a look at the Redmi 6, yet another budget phone announced by Xiaomi last month which will be making its local debut next week. It’s poised to build on the momentum generated by the Redmi 5 and 5A – potentially making it another killer budget phone.

What’s in the box?

The Redmi 6 comes in Xiaomi’s typical bright red packaging for its more affordable Redmi series of devices. Inside the box is the phone, USB cable plus charger.

Xiaomi typically doesn’t include headphones with its phones and it’s the same deal here. There are no other freebies in our retail example, but that may change when the phone is made for sale next week.

What is it?

The Redmi 6, in a nutshell, is the latest budget phone from Xiaomi. While it doesn’t have a local price yet, our estimates put the phone at the 8.5K price range for the pricier 4GB/64GB version of the phone.

For that price, the phone comes with a 5.45-inch HD+ resolution 18:9 aspect ratio display, along with a minimalistic design, dual camera capabilities and AI (supposedly).

How’s it feel?

It feels good, though at this price point it’s not surprising that Xiaomi skimped out on a few things material-wise. Even though the phone looks like it has a metal back, the phone is made primarily out of plastic with a metallic finish applied to the coloration, which in our review phone’s case was grey. It’s quite lighter than the phones we’ve been handling recently, though it doesn’t feel cheap or poorly built.

The fingerprint scanner is located at the rear of the phone, while the dual rear cameras (12-megapixel/5-megapixel) are located on the upper left, stacked horizontally. The speaker grille is also on the back, near the bottom.

Going around the phone you’ll see the power and volume rocker on the right side, while the SIM and microSD tray is located on the left side. There are separate trays for both the SIM cards and microSD card so you won’t have to decide if you want extra storage or an extra SIM – you can have both. The 3.5mm jack is on top while the USB port is on the bottom.

Up front you’ll see the 5.45-inch HD+ display, that has an 18:9 aspect ratio. The phone is a little tall because of the substantial bezels on the top and bottom.

The phone is powered by MediaTek’s latest processor, the Helio P22 with the phone coming in two distinct flavors for processor and storage options: 3GB/32GB and 4GB/64GB. Our review unit is the latter, and for what we expect the price of the phone to be it’s actually not bad.

The phone still has Xiaomi’s MIUI running on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. When Xiaomi announced the phone it came with AI smarts of sorts in the form of Xiao, a voice assistant that we assume is the equivalent of Google’s Assistant. Sadly, we couldn’t find the option to turn it on in our unit.

Xiaomi has yet to announce what the price of the Redmi 6 is, though historically the company has priced their wares pretty close to the sticker price in China. We’ll all have to find out next week.

Xiaomi Redmi 6/6A specs

• MediaTek Helio P22 chipset (Redmi 6)/MediaTek Helio A22 chipset (Redmi 6A)
• 2GB RAM(Redmi 6A)
• 3GB/4GB RAM (Redmi 6)
• 5.45-inch HD+ display (1440 x 720 resolution)
• 16GB (Redmi 6A), expandable storage
• 32GB/64GB (Redmi 6), expandable storage
• 12-megapixel/5-megapixel dual rear cameras (Redmi 6)
• 13-megapixel rear camera (Redmi 6A)
• 5-megapixel front camera
• Dual SIM
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, Fingerprint scanner, face unlock (Redmi 6)