Redmi 5 Review

Redmi 5 

"The Best Budget Phone"

By technologie007: 

Xiaomi the leading smartphone brand in India is launching its budget smartphone Redmi 5 on 20th March 2018, 12pm IST.

Is it the Best Budget Device out there?

Lets see what Redmi 5 is offering. 

Redmi 5 By Xiaomi is the best budget smartphone which is just available for Rs.7,999 for 2GB+16GB variant. The price point is just too good for such a smartphone and there are 2 more variants for this device which are 3GB+32GB  and other one is 4GB+64GB*(32GB)*.

Flash Sale will be starting from 20th March 12pm IST on amazon.in, mi.com, and mi home offline stores. 

Redmi 5 was firstly launched in China (红米5-Hong mi5) and now its going to be released in india too.

The Redmi 5 in China has MIUI 9.2 out-of the box and there is update available for MIUI 9.5 stable for Chinese ROM running on Android 7.1.2,  but for Indian Version Redmi 5 Runs on MIUI 9.1 based on Android 7.1.2 (Global ROM).

Updates to other regions will be rolling out soon.

Key Features of Redmi 5 are:

1. 5.7"inch 18:9 Full Screen Display.
2. Ergonomically Curved Body. 
3. 14nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 450-Octa Core Processor
4. First Slimmest Phone by Xiaomi 7.7mm
5. 3300mAh Battery Xiaomi claims a 31 days standby**
6. 12MP Rear Camera with larger Pixels 1.25μm pixels.
7. 5MP Front Camera with LED Selfie-Light.
8. Reinforced Corner design to protect display, precise polished cover glass to reduce damage by 30%.
9. Connectivity : 4G Volte, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi, hotspot
10. Feels like All metal back but not though its quite well with premium finishing.

These were some features from this "Budget King Device".

Redmi 5 actually resembles lot like Redmi Note 5 (India) and Redmi Note 5 Pro or better called as Redmi 5 Plus in China.

With a Full Screen Display of 18:9 resolution and 5.7" and 720x1440 pixels and weighs just 157g and a 2.5D curved glass on top which is precisely polished Redmi 5 is "Class Apart". 

The front has no physical button or touch sensitive keys only on-screen navigation are available.

A screen shot from Redmi 5(chinese variant) using full Screen settings no navigation button at bottom. With a Custom Theme. 

DISPLAY:

There is even an option to use Redmi 5 with gestures only if you want to utilise the whole 5.7" display in The Full Screen Display option in Settings. 

CAMERA:

Coming to Camera 12MP rear one with a larger pixel support as seen in some high end phones too, Camera performance is quite well in terms of lightening condition too it performs well at-least at this price point its too good.

Front Camera is a 5MP and has LED light for better Selfies in low light conditions and has Beautify 3.0 mode for perfect selfies.

Below are camera samples:

DESIGN: 

The Ergonomically Curved design of this phone gives hands a good feel. Its just 157g and 7.7mm probably the first Xiaomi slimmest phone. While holding it appears to be small but still it has a 5.7" display thanks to the rounded corner designs and a 75.9% screen to body ratio.

The dimensions of phone are : 151.8 x 72.8 x 7.7mm.

Actually Redmi 5 is smaller to hold than iphone 8 Plus which has a display of 5.5".

Rear Camera lens is a bit protruding out it could be better if it had flat appearance and finger print sensor is placed right below the camera at back.

The Finger print sensor is quite fast. 

HARDWARE:

Redmi 5 has a 14nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 Octa-Core 1.8GHz Cortex A-53 Processor.

Packed with a 506 Adreno GPU. Xiaomi is claiming for a smooth gaming experience and low power consumption. Thanks to 14nm FinFet Technology.

Xiaomi claiming for a better battery life though its 3300mAh but the 14nm SD 450 together with MIUI delivering a system level optimisation and to deliver a better performance with lower power consumption.

SD 450 is also seen in some mid range to upper end phones too in that terms its a good hardware specs. offered by Xiaomi for a Budget device like Redmi 5.

SOFTWARE: 

Running on Android 7.1.2 on the top of it Xiaomi's famous MIUI 9. 

MIUI 9.1(India) , 9.2 and the latest 9.5(for China only till now) all perfect in terms of usage and features they offer with good optimisation. 

These screen shots from Redmi 5 (Chinese Version)

Better optimisation and good performance makes MIUI one of the top UI for Android phones.

BATTERY AND PERFORMANCE:

The overall performance of phone is quite well handles multi task easily and heavy games as well and there is no heating issues so far.

The best part is 14nm chip which is power efficient, and the 3300mAh battery though it appears less but it can deliver a Day and half of moderate usage even 2 days*(depends on your usage and varies from individual to individual usage) and one good thing is Redmi 5 charging is quite fast as well.

As we can see in above Screenshot 1 Browser test using Html5 test and Screenshot 2 is Battery usage details.

TESTS:

After some of the tests performed on Redmi 5 these were the results:

As we can see this is the AnTuTu Benchmark score of Redmi 5 using a 3GB RAM variant phone. Though the score may not appear to be very impressive but still this device is a power packed one as it handles task easily and multitasking is easy too.

            

CONCLUSION:

Seeing the overall specs and features of Redmi 5 Its really the Best Budget Smartphone a.k.a King of Budget Smartphones out there in market at present. 

Redmi 5 is "Class Apart" smartphone in its price segment and the features its offering. 

The important thing here is if Xiaomi releases MIUI updates soon then it will be much more appreciated by its customers and all MIUI fans. 

Running on Android 7.1.2 still feels a bit older now since Android 8.0 Oreo is already quite old so it would be good If MIUI is seen running on Android 8.0.

Overall Redmi 5 is a "The Compact Power-house" from Xiaomi. Go for it.✅

Over all rating by technologie007:

• Design: 5/5
• Camera: 4.5/5
• Price: 4.5/5
• Performance: 4/5

Honor 7X Vs Redmi 5 Plus : Battle of Mid-Range Smartphones

Honor 7X Vs. Redmi 5Plus

By technologie007: 

Usually on our blog we don't review smartphones but these two smartphones i.e honor 7X and redmi 5plus are worth comparing. As the Competition in mid-rangers (cost effective smartphones) going intense, honor and xiaomi both are offering superb specifications smartphones at a reasonable price point.  

Honor 7X was launched back in October 2017 seeing the popular success of Honor, Xiaomi launched their Redmi 5 Plus in December 2017. 

Both smartphones are offering a 6" screen (approx.) with full touch no touch keys in front with a 18:9 display.

The front look of both Honor 7X and Xiaomi Redmi 5Plus is elegant and very impressive. 

Honor 7X is ergnomically more impressive to hold in hands and design and comfortable in grip, though it depends from individual to individual. (HF&E - Human Factors and Ergonomics). 

Otherwise Redmi 5 Plus in design is not bad either its also beautifully designed with a good finish. In fact Both smartphones feel slim to hold and easy thanks to one-handed operation feature of MIUI which makes it easier to use big screen smartphones.

Coming to technical specifications : 

Honor 7X is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 659 chip set. 

HiSilicon fully owned by Huawei and is offering a good hardware for honor 7X. ↷

With a 16nm (FinFET), 64-Bit CPU, Octa-Core, and GPU ARM-Mali T-830 MP2 offers its users with a decent gaming performance and good performance overall.

While the Redmi 5 Plus offering Qualcomm MSM8953 Snapdragon 625 using leading cutting edge 14nm technology (FinFET) which is another mid-range to mid-up range segment but a power-pack processor.  Also an Octa-Core A-53 Cortex processor supporting 64-Bit with a Combination of Adreno 506 GPU (Qualcomm claiming to provide PC Class graphics with this GPU)  with integrated X-9 LTE category. 

Comparison Between Both SoC

      Name:          Kirin 659                        Snapdragon 625

WhatsApp Fix for BlackBerry 10 Devices

WhatsApp Fix For BlackBerry 10 Devices 2017

By Aj:

First of All After a long time I am writing post Sorry for delays, But I think this post worth writing as Many are having trouble with WhatsApp on their BlackBerry 10 Devices. 

As of WhatsApp Blog 1 Billion people are using WhatsApp or may be more I think. That's nearly 1 in 7 people on earth who use WhatApp each month to stay in touch with their loved ones, their friends and their family.(Says WhatsApp Source: https://blog.whatsapp.com/616/One-billion)

According To WhatsApp the following devices will not be supported later in 2017:

• BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10*
• Nokia S40 
• Nokia Symbian S60 
• Android 2.1 and Android 2.2 
• Windows Phone 7 
• iPhone 3GS/iOS 6

Though WhatsApp Updated their blog and said that: WhatsApp is extending support for BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60 until June 30, 2017. https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000617/WhatsApp-support-for-mobile-devices

Our Main concern is BlackBerry 10 users as their are still many users out there using BlackBerry 10 Devices. 

So For this BB 10 users have to install The below app which is called "WAA Fixer"

You can find the app in BlackBerry Beta Zone If you are not able to find, here below is a link for that app.

Just install "WAA Fixer" then BB10 users can send media files like Photos or Pictures or Images.

Note : Video sharing is still not fixed.

"Thanks to CellNinja For this App".


Download WAA Fixer

You just have to install this app on your BlackBerry 10 Device rest leave everything on the App it will handle itself as this App runs in background. After installing this App now you can send photos or pictures till now, video support to be added later. 

Important Note: Install WhatsApp from WhatsApp official site 

or visit this link from from your phone browser

whatsapp.com/dl

Note : Choose Android Version WhatsApp not the BlackBerry Version.

Or you can Download WhatsApp from any market but latest version android apk and install on your BB10 device. 

For Installing WAA Fixer steps are already given in the previous post on this blog of ⏪ sideloading apps ⏪you can either use BB10/PlayBook app manager extension in your Chrome Browser/Opera as well or alternatively use Sachesi for installation.

Since WAA Fixer is .bar app you need to sideload this app on your phone as it can't be installed directly.

Update:

Update: @technologie007

There is another app in BlackBerry World named as "WhatsFIxer"

With this app media files can be shared on WhatsApp for BlackBerry 10.

Thanks to CellNinja.  

Get the App for BB10 at BlackBerry App World.

 

Windows 10 Update 1511, 10586

Windows 10 Update 1511, 10586

The first big update to windows 10 "Threshold 2" (1511 = November the 11th month of 2015).

Though it was said this update will fix a lot of problems, but apart fixing some issues it- itself has some bugs and issues. will discuss them at the end of these post.

 Microsoft is making activation a little easier, restoring colored window title bars, integrating Skype, and improving the Edge browser. But they’ve also added advertisements to the Start menu, though these advertisements appear as App suggestions from Microsoft Store.

1.) Start Menu App Suggestions: Though these are not so annoying but can't predict in future will these be noisy or not. But actually this is good the app suggestion feature is good may be future the type of apps people mostly use on their device will get suggestions based on this such as If Utility or productivity is your main app collection you will get the same suggestion based on your collection or search history. These feature is good if its not annoying. Initially only 3 columns in Start menu now you can add 4th Column as well.
Go to Settings>Personalization>Start>Show more tiles. Previously 512 tiles now shows upto 2048 tiles.

2.) Disabling the windows background image: during Signing in.  Go To Personalization( Disable) in Settings to do so.

3.) Cortana Improvements: Cortana can now be used with local account as well as with microsoft account. Now if you are reading some document(pdf file) just 'right click' on selected  word and 'Ask Cortana' you want to know More about it.

4.) New icons: All lot of new icons are seen such as in Control Panel icons changed.

5.) Memory Manager: 'Compression store' is the new component added to Memory Manager. It lets OS compress items in memory when running out of memory.

6.) Edge : Microsoft Edge has improved its sync part now. Now synchronize Favourites, Reading List , Settings from one pc to another. Though its not much great as this should be present in initial Update also. But support for HTML5,CSS3,ECMASript in its engine is good.
But Tab Preview (just like Opera Browser) is good You can view the webpage without actually opening , if multiple tabs are opened then just take your mouse pointer to any tab to preview the webpage you opened in Background. 
Wirelessly cast your media from Edge to Miracast on DLNA devices "Great".

7) Storage Location: Now with this update 1511 you can change where your apps are being installed. Change your Install Location of your apps from (C:) Drive to any other as you want. you can also change storage location for your music, pictures,videos as well.

There are many other features which are added as well such as :

Tablet mode improvements, skype improvements, Nested Virtualization( for developers) , Default printer improvements ( set to most recent used one) , More Consistent Context Menus, coloured title bars , Find My Device can natively tace your lost pc/laptop via GPS and location services.

So these were some of the features and improvements added to latest update to Windows 10. But since this update 1511 is approx. 3GB so plz make sure your connection is unmetered one or an unlimited one. It took a lot of time to Download the update and Install. But that depends on Your Connection Speed.

---- So earlier in the post it was said it itself has some issues with it. Yes that's true During startup when you turned  On the pc or laptop If you see the "Action Center" You will notice Airplane mode and WiFi to be turned On simultaneously . Actually The WiFi is Turned On and it shows up and Flight mode is not But That Too shows up and If actuall turned On Flight mode  will now turn On really and shows up.

---- Also sometimes during startup notification icon shows some notification but actually there are no new notification in 'Notification Center'. May be there some bugs in this update.

---- In Synaptics Pointing Devices The Touch Pad Configuration which user wrote or saved are no longer saved these are overwritten by default configuration Don't NO why this is happening but this is annoying as Cortana shows up Every Time by mistake During Tapping 3 fingers.

So Overall you can find many improvements and added features which were necessary but there are some issues as well which makes to go back to intial build and wait for some time to fixed. Hoping these are fixed as soon as possible.