Month: March 2019

We review one of the most anticipated phones for Q1 2019, the Redmi Note 7 PRO!

After a very successful launch on January 10th 2019, Redmi has finally separated itself from Xiaomi, therefore becoming an independent brand of its own. Then the Redmi Note 7 was born, a continuation to the popular Redmi Note Series. This unit has sold more than 1 Million units in China alone in just 1 month, this time they also announced that they will unveil a Pro edition after the Spring Festival but it wasnt announced until March 18th. Now we got our hands on this upgraded beast. The argument was the Note 7 sports a fake 48MP under the Samsung Isocell Sensor simply because the Snapdragon 660 can only process up to 23MP size photos. Now the Sony IMX i586 is paired with the new SD 675 probably to silence all critics. Warning, this unit will only launch in India and China. 

Redmi Note 7 Pro Specs Sheet

• 6.3-inch FHD+ IPS LCD display @ 2340 x 1080 pixels, 409ppi, 81.4% Screen to Body Ratio, 19.5:9 Ratio
• Corning Gorilla Glass 5
• 2.0GHz Snapdragon 675 Octa-core CPU Qualcomm SDM675 (11nm) (2×2.0 GHz Kryo 460 Gold & 6×1.7 GHz Kryo 460 Silver)
• Adreno 612 GPU 845MHz
• 6GB RAM
• 128GB Internal storage
• Expandable via microSD, up to 256GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
• 48MP 0.8μm Rear Camera, f/1.8 Aperture, 1/2″, PDAF, face recognition, HDR, AI Portrait Mode, Night Scene, SONY IMX 586
• 5MP 1.12μm secondary lens, depth sensor, f/2.4 Aperture, Samsung S5k5e8
• 13MP front-facing camera, 1.12μm, AI Smart Beauty, 1080p, AI Portrait Mode, Omnivision Sensor
• Hybrid Dual-SIM (Nano + Nano/Micro SD)
• 4G LTE, 4G+, VoLTE
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4G/5G Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Display
• Bluetooth 5.0
• GPS w/ A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou Positioning
• Fingerprint scanner, Face Unlocking Feature
• USB-C Port
• 4000 mAh battery, Quick Charge 4.0 Support
• Android 9 on MIUI 10.2
• 159.21mm x 75.21mm x 8.1mm
• 186grams
• Available in Space Black, Nebula Red, Neptune Blue

Design

The Redmi Note 7 and Pro has a design of its own, not copied from its predecessor unlike Redmi Note 6 being a knockoff from the Redmi Note 5 Pro. The Redmi Note 6 made a very quiet global debut while the new Redmi Note 7 sure created a lot of noise and hype in the mobile world. This phone has taken a notch up since it has a striking resemblance with the Mi 8 Lite, now the pricing has been released, and I guess Mi 8 Lite sales will be on the decline for sure. Redmi has since boasted its deployment of the Corning Gorilla 5 glass both front and back, plus its not as slippery as a glass back should be. The sides are definitely plastic and the teardrop notch is definitely the “In” thing this 2019 as the Apple-ish notch trend has start to fade away. The game changer is definitely the gradient back but the screen to phone ratio could have improved a bit over the Redmi Note 7, but they decided to keep it as it is.

Unboxing

Always my favorite part of the review, the unboxing. You can see that the Redmi Note 7 Pro has a better and more attractive box compared to the Redmi Note 7, the purple pinkish gradient color looks nice enough to catch some attention even by just looking at the box.

Presenting the Redmi Note 7 Pro

Redmi Note 7 Pro, USB C Cable, QC 3 Charger 18W, Protection Case and Manuals

The back has the Dual Camera as well as the LED Flash plus the finger print scanner

Sony IMX 586

Teardrop Notch Design
The Redmi Note 7 Pro is an exact copy of the Redmi Note 7, there is no indication or markers physically to determine that its a Pro edition, you really need to check inside the specs just to know if its the upgraded version or not.

Snapdragon 675
The 1st Xiaomi manufactured phone to use the SD 675 which was quite an upgrade from the Redmi Note 7. Now it sports a 11nm SoC while boosting with a better GPU using the Adreno 612 which runs up to 845Mhz. Redmi sure did packed more punch into this one as probably its the best SoC that the Redmi Note Series has ever sported. I place this beast under several game test and multitasking as well, games like ML, PUBG and NBA2k19 was playing normally since this one has a 6GB RAM out of the box.

Antutu gave it a score of 177613 out the box testing while the Redmi Note 7 notched a 144000 points during our review.

Connectivity
The Redmi Note 7 Pro supports 10 different LTE bands, it’s easy to switch to LTE network inside the settings and whats good on this unit now is that you can also set 2nd Sim on LTE as well since it now deploys the Dual 4G technology on this unit but it should consume battery faster. We have experienced no problem surfing using LTE or 3G in our home country in the Philippines as well as dual standby mode is working seamlessly. Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac is also smooth and it also supports Wi-Fi Direct. Wireless screen mirroring is also available via the Miracast protocol as we were able to cast it to the Mi TV 4C, tethering data is also working perfectly. Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, and GLONASS are all present and working pretty good. We also have a smooth navigation using Waze using the Redmi Note 7 Pro (the Redmi Note 7 had a GPS problem out of the box but was later corrected by a software update).
Network band

GSM	B2/3/5/8
CDMA	BC0
WCDMA	B1/2/5/8
TD-SCDMA	B34/39
TDD-LTE	B34/38/39/40/41 (100MHz)
FDD-LTE	B1/3/5/7/8

Audio and Video
MP4 M4V MKV XVID WAV AAC MP3 AMR FLAC 

Supports H.265/HEVC (Main profile), H.264 (Baseline/Main/High profile), MPEG4 (Simple profile/ASP), VC-1 (Simple/Main/Advanced profile) 

Video formats such as PCM, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, MP3, AMR-NB and WB, FLAC, WAV, etc.

Camera

Everytime we get our hands on a new phone, its always boils down to the camera. Especially this unit that sported a 48MP makes me want to take it out immediately and test the camera out of the box. The Sony IMX 586 is present inside the Mi 9 and Mi MIX 3, therefore the performance should be someone on that level at least and this gets me excited.

The camera takes pretty good photos in daylight and in low light areas it is quite better than the Redmi Note 7 in terms of camera performance. The manual mode from the camera has quite improved a lot from Redmi Note 6 Pro since you can maximize the 48MP on the Manual/PRO mode. This time you can use the 48MP on the normal mode, you just need to drop down the menu. Video can run up to UHD4K 30FPS on this camera.

Photo Samples

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Selfie Camera

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Battery Performance

We were able to achieve a good battery rating for this unit since its a Snapdragon (Qualcomm is known for their battery efficiency), we lasted a day on normal usage without hitting the charging port or power bank. PC Mark Battery Stress Test rated it at 14 hours 56 minute SOT, which is an hour more than that of the Redmi Note 7. Now we have tested the charging time, we were able to charge from 20% to 100% within 1 hour and 4 minutes as we monitored it closely while charging, it has achieved 6.8volts and 2.4amperes while using the stock 18W quick charger.

Conclusion
After playing this unit for a few days, I was really quite impressed with the Redmi Note 7 Pro and the Redmi Note 7 isnt really far behind the performance of this one, this one just got more enhancement. We didn’t bother to do any torture test on this since its exactly the same as the Redmi Note 7 which we have thoroughly tortured. They still give out a 18 Month warranty for this unit and its a good start and things are looking bright for the Redmi Company. If you get the chance to buy this phone, I suggest you go for it since its every notch higher in terms of SoC, Camera and GPU, and of course the included charger which is a QC 3.0. But if your country dont have this, I still highly recommend the Redmi Note 7 as this is exactly the same as the Redmi Note 7 Pro just that some specs got upgraded. This phone will not be sold outside China and India.

1599 RMB Redmi Note 7 Pro 6GB/128GB