Xiaomi has been very impressive in the budget line-up for quite a few years for now. The China-based company has been satisfying its customers by providing high-value products for less money. That’s the main reason Xiaomi stands as the budget king, Xiaomi is best at what it does. With the introduction of more budget smartphones from different companies, Xiaomi is still able to maintain its standards. The Redmi 5 Plus was launched a few months back in Nepal( known as Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 pro in India). The Redmi Note 5 AI is an upgrade to the Redmi Note 5 pro on the camera department, which will definitely give the phone a slight edge over the Redmi Note 5 pro. The Redmi Note 5 AI is the Chinese variant of the device. The device comes with Android Oreo 8.0 with MIUI 9.0 on the top.
Now, talking about the Redmi Note 5 AI, it sports 5.99-inch IPS FHD+ display(403 ppi) with the trendy 19:8 aspect ratio which gives the phone a good 77.4% screen-to-body ratio. It has a premium looking metal build (Tapered back cover) and definitely feels good on hand. The smartphone is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 chipset clocked at 1.8 GHz(Octa-core) and the graphics department is assigned to the Adreno 509 GPU. It comes with 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64 GB of internal storage onboard.
Moving onto the camera department, the Note 5 AI sports the stunning vertically aligned dual-cameras setup, like in the iPhone X. The primary camera is a 12MP(f/1.9,1.4-μm) Sony IMX 486 sensor and secondary camera is 5MP,(f/2.0, 1.25µm) Samsung sensor(dual-PDAF, dual-LED flash). The dual camera setup is capable of taking high-quality pictures with bokeh effects(also known as Portrait Mode). The camera can record 1080p@30 fps, 720p@30 fps, and slow-motion video @120 fps (720p). The front-facing camera is a13 MP (f/2.0, 1.12µm) with LED flash which is also capable of taking high-quality portrait selfies. The front-facing camera can record 1080p@ 30 fps and 720p@30 fps. It also possesses some image enhancing feature like AI smart beauty. The company claims that the front-facing camera of this phone can be compared to those of the iPhone X and Pixel 2 as it uses AI technology which helps the camera capture really good images.
Now, you may be wondering what is the significant difference between the Redmi Note 5 pro and the Redmi Note 5 AI. Why launch the same phone with two names? You may also think that the Indian variant has got more camera megapixels on the front camera than the Chinese variant. Don’t fall for the numbers, numbers aren’t everything.
The rear cameras are basically the same on both the variants except for the pixel size. The 12 MP camera on AI has a 1.4µm pixel size whereas the Note 5 Pro has a 1.25µm pixel size. The increased pixel size helps the AI variant to excel in the low lighting conditions and can perform comparatively better than the Note 5 pro in artificial lightings. The 5 MP camera on the AI also has a larger pixel size (f/2.0 aperture, 1.25µm pixel size) compared to the Note 5 pro variant(f/2.0 aperture, 1.12µm pixel size) which will help the Chinese variant to capture images with more detail. Now, coming to the front-facing camera, the Chinese version has 13 MP(f/2.0 aperture, 1.12µm pixel size) whereas the Indian variant has 20MP(f/2.2 aperture, 1.1µm pixel size). I am telling you again, don’t go for the number. The smaller aperture and larger pixel size on the Chinese variant help the phone take comparatively better images than the Indian version.
The smartphone was launched in China for 1,399 Yuan ($220) which is nearly equivalent to NPR 24,000. But yet again, Vatsal Impex has aggressively priced the 4GB version of the Redmi Note 5 AI at Rs. 28,499. The price can be expected to fall only when Teletalk brings the phone to the market.
So, what do you guys think about the Redmi Note AI? Let us know your views in the comments below.
