Xiaomi India’s latest offering, the Xiaomi Redmi Y1 and Xiaomi Redmi Y1 Lite have seen a huge response to the first sale. As a matter of fact, the company almost emptied the stock within 180 seconds, making it an all-time company record for 2017 (though, nothing can beat the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 sales record).
What does this number mean to the company and the users: As the user’s response is unprecedented and overwhelming, the company has succeeded in finding the perfect blend between the Redmi Note series and the Redmi series. The brand did a small experiment with its first selfie-focused camera in the country and it has worked out well for the brand. There is a huge market for the selfie cameras in India, and from now onwards the company like Xiaomi will step up its selfie segment product portfolio so, one can expect more and more selfie centric smartphones in the near future with a lot of additional capabilities.
So, along with the affordable note series and affordable Redmi series, the company now has one more responsibility AKA, the selfie phone. If we look at the company’s history, they didn’t have a single selfie-centric smartphone till date and their competitors didn’t have any smartphone except for the selfie. So, now Oppo and Vivo should really change their way of marketing smartphones from now onwards.
If you know nothing about the Redmi Y1 and Redmi Y1 Lite, here are the complete tech specifications of the same. The Redmi Y1 features a 5.5-inch HD IPS LCD screen, protected by 2.5D curved tempered glass on the top. Under the hood, the device is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Octa-core SoC, paired with 3 GB or 4 GB RAM with 32 GB or 64 GB onboard flash storage with a dedicated micro SD card slot.
The device has its nerve on the 16 MP front-facing selfie camera with a dedicated LED flash with beauty mode, which enhances the colour and the contrast. On the main board, the device offers a 13 MP rear-facing camera with 1080p video recording capability. The device is priced at ₹ 8,999 and ₹10,999 for the 3 GB and 4 GB RAM variant.
The Redmi Y1 Lite is more of an entry-level budget oriented Android smartphone with the same 5.5-inch HD screen on the Xiaomi Redmi Y1. Under the hood, the device is powered by the entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 Octa-core SoC, paired with 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM and 16 GB onboard flash storage with a dedicated micro SD card with dual SIM card slots with 4G LTE and VoLte capability.
The device offers a 13 MP rear-facing camera with 720p video recording capability with a 5 MP front-facing selfie camera. The device misses out on few features like the fingerprint scanner, which might be the make or break deal for some.
Both models offer a full plastic build with MiUi 9 on the top of Android Nougat 7.1 with features like the dual app, multi-window and faster app responses compared to the other third-party user interface.
We wouldn’t say this is their best bet on the entry-level model, but, the company have nailed it with the selfie camera. To conclude, Xiaomi Redmi Y1 offers the best selfie capability in the market without any doubt.