30 days with Redmi Note 4 Matte Black, 4GB edition, MIUI detailed review

30 days with Redmi Note 4 Matte Black, 4GB edition, MIUI detailed review

Redmi Note 4 stands as a strong contender with all competitors. Xiaomi is known for its ‘Value for money’ products and successfully proves it with ‘Redmi Note 4’. Here, we unboxed and enjoyed 30 days with Redmi Note 4 Matte Black, 4GB edition. Let’s discuss our detailed opinion about each and every aspect from customer’s view.

Redmi Note 3, also saw success with a whopping 2.3 million units sold just in six months of its sale.

Design and Durability

Redmi Note 4 Matte Black edition surely impresses you with its premium looks and design and gives enough competition to other brands in a segment of 10K to 30K. Unibody metal design attracts your attention when you either keep the smartphone facing back on a table or took in hands. Antenna lines on top and bottom at back adds beautiful art to design. Rounded edges and speaker grill under bottom not only upgrades design values but also physically increases stability and enhances sound level. Placement of dual tone flash between the camera lens and fingerprint sensor at back with same geometric design adds a custom design to the smartphone.

Battery performance

4100 mah really performs long more than you could expect. Redmi Note 4 with a full day of heavy usage easily lasts long for a day. I didn’t regret fast charging as one complete charge cycle easily gives you full day backup. I played a lot of heavy games, switched from Wifi to 4G networks, a lot of calls but didn’t found any sign of low battery. Redmi Note 4 easily provides 2 days of usage if you are using for light purposes such as normal data usage and taking few calls. Redmi Note 4 never heated while gaming or 4G usage. Slight change in temperature you might feel in fewer conditions which are rare.

How cool is processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 64-bit Processor performs more than expectations,  didn’t faced any lag while using multiple apps or apps running in the background. Though processor has been degraded from Redmi Note 3 but the slight improvement has resulted in more stable performance and battery saving. Playing heavy games like Asphalt 8 or Modern Combat, I never faced any lag or stuck in between.

 Shooting experience

Clicking experience on Redmi Note 4 has been improved considering its old generation model Redmi Note 3. Rear 13 MP camera shoots some nice photographs in daylight or sufficient source of light. The camera performed well but a slight difference in colour reproduction is noted in few shots. Auto focus takes some time to assign itself to the centre of subject. If this could be reduced, there will be a vast difference in performance. Macro shots were fine but still not up to the mark and require few tweaking. Front 5 MP camera impresses with some nice selfie pictures and adds some virtual brightness which improves pictures a lot.  Videos are recorded at 1920 X 1080 Full HD which are crisp enough to show on all displays.

Who is best : Redmi Note 4 or Moto G5

MIUI, Good or Bad

 

Let’s talk about good things first, MIUI 8 provides tonnes of helpful features that can’t be achieved even by installing a lot of third party apps on a stock Android OS.

Dual apps: Do the two

‘Dual apps’ is such an amazing feature available in Note 4. It allows you to use two different accounts of an app on a single device. Suppose you need two different accounts for an instant chat messenger app or social media app. You can directly tap into another account just with a click flawlessly. You can get ‘Dual apps’ for almost all apps installed on the device.

Second Space: Another phone in a phone

‘Second Space’ on Redmi Note 4, completely creates a virtual secondary environment which allows you to use it as a private space separated from your normal user account. You can customise it as ‘Personal’ phone as comparing to another one as ‘Professional’. It allows you to use a different Google Account and you can utilise everything independent of first professional space.

Security and Permissions

Redmi Note 4 offers various Security and Permission controls that directly offers more precise control and secured device experience. You might need to download third party apps for specific tasks, but here you can have all in one roof. ‘Cleaner’ functions automatically detects cache, unwanted data on phone and provides one-touch cleaning mechanism. It also prompts over shortcut bar if unwanted data needs to be cleaned.

App by app data utilisation can be tracked by ‘Data Usage’ feature. Unwanted calls can also be blocked easily by inbuilt ‘Blocklist’ feature. Battery health and usage pattern being recorded in ‘Battery’ tab where you can know about temperature and remaining battery. Here you can also save battery by a lot of tweaking. You can set time of app sync and schedule Start and End time.

The virus scanner is provided by Avast, a well-known antivirus provider. It automatically detects suspicious items and warns about same. Scanner auto scans your phone from time to time.

Providing app-specific permissions can be done at ‘Permissions’ tab. Every app needs specific permissions related to hardware or software

The best thing I loved about MIUI is ‘Automated tasks’. It allows creating a lot of automatic tasks for your phone. Suppose you are not using from 11 pm to 6 am or you just don’t want to get disturbed. You can easily create task defining whether to keep the phone on Airplane mode or Silent mode. It not only allows you to sleep uninterrupted but also saves your battery. You can also check your connection speed anytime which shows which apps are consuming data at the moment. Test Network as the name suggests tests your WiFi and mobile data network.

If you ever wanted to lock certain apps on your phone you might just download locking app from Play store full of ads but MIUI already includes much stronger ‘App lock’ options which support all modes of protection including fingerprint, passcode or pattern.

Overall MIUI directly improves functionality and upgrades user experience and let you get rid of third party apps for each and every small task. But, RAM consumption also increases in the background. When you switch on phone for the first time, you are presented with 2 GB of free RAM out of 4 GB. Unfortunately, after long usage, I find RAM consumption increases up to 3 GB and a restart is required. Although, the performance never feels degraded even with less remaining memory.

Final Verdict

Redmi Note 4, stands clearly out of the crowd, just not only for its performance but also due to price factor and different variant available starting from Rs 9,999. You can pick any variant from 2 GB, 3GB or 4 GB with 32 GB and 64 GB memory options. If you are looking for a smartphone with decent shooting experience and full day battery backup with premium looks, you can definitely give a chance to Redmi Note 4

Who is best : Redmi Note 4 or Moto G5