With more than 7 million Redmi Y-series smartphones shipped in India to date, Xiaomi is pretty convinced that selfies are prevalent and crucial for users – while the trend looks to have passed and selfies are losing their charm. Still, Xiaomi has today debuted the Redmi Y3, its latest selfie-centric smartphone, in the country with the 32MP selfie shooter being the attention-grabber and headline-maker.
Before we dive in and talk about my experience with the Redmi Y3, check out the major specifications of the device below:
Redmi Y3: Design and Build
Well, starting off with the design and aesthetics, the Redmi Y3 does compete well against its competitors and offers you a pretty good build. There’s a trendy gradient finish on the rear, which is indeed shiny, the trendy teardrop notch (or the Dot Notch as Xiaomi likes to call it), and as is the case with phones in this price range, there’s an expansive HD+ display onboard as well.
So, the Redmi Y3, like most Redmi phones these days packs in everything you need, in a fairly premium looking design. Plus, it also has the “P2i water repellent coating,” which is now becoming a standard on Xiaomi’s phones, so a few splashes of water won’t harm the phone.
Redmi Y3: Display
The Redmi Y3 features a 6.26-inch IPS LCD display and it seems pretty good in the brief time I have spent with the smartphone. I mean, the screen is as good as an HD+ display gets in this price range. The colors look nice, the panel is vibrant, and while we would have liked the display to be a bit brighter, I will take this without any complaints.
Anyway, moving away from the elegant design, let’s turn our focus to the highlight of the Redmi Y3. The cameras. Now, we all know that the Redmi Y series is popular for its selfie camera prowess and we’re first going to focus on them and then talk about the dual rear shooter.
So, the Redmi Y3 brings a 32MP (f/2.2) selfie camera, with features like HDR, AI portrait mode, palm shutter mode, and 1080p video recording with EIS in tow. So yes, the selfie camera on this smartphone looks nice, but let’s take a look at some selfies. You can see below that selfies clicked in good lighting are pretty good, but in low light, a bit of noise starts to creeps in. Still, things look sunny for Redmi Y3’s selfie performance.
Anyway, as I mentioned, the Redmi Y3’s front camera supports 1080p video recording at 30fps with EIS, and well, the smartphone seems to be sorted on the selfie front. You can easily use the Y3 for livestreams and vlogging, thanks to such stable videos – like the one you find attached below:
Moving our attention to the rear, the Redmi Y3 packs a 12MP (f/2.2) primary sensor and a 2MP depth sensor. This dual-rear camera is same as the one we have already seen on the Redmi Note 7, and well, it captures some pretty crisp pictures. Here’s a few photos taken from the phone:
As you can see, the phone takes some decent photos in good light and in low light as well. For the phone’s price, which I think is a tad higher than expected, these are definitely nice photos.
On the video front, the Redmi Y3 supports up to 1080p at 60fps videos and well, you can find a sample video attached below. The video looks decent and since we’ve got EIS here as well, it’s fairly stable too and we find no problems with the rear setup.
So, the cameras on Redmi Y3 are pretty good, but if they’re better than the Realme 3 is a question that requires a lot of testing. We’ll answer the same in our complete review soon.
Moving to the performance, well, Redmi Y3 is powered by the octa-core Snapdragon 632 chipset, with up to 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. Now, we have the 3GB of RAM variant, and let me start off by showing the benchmark scores as y’all like to compare it with other smartphones, don’t you?
So, compared to the Galaxy M10, the Snapdragon 632 SoC on the Redmi Y3 is obviously better but when compared to the Realme 3, powered by the Helio P70, the Redmi Y3 just lags behind.
Redmi Y3: Software
Moving on the software, the Redmi Y3 comes with MIUI 10 with Android 9 Pie, and it’s the usual MIUI 10, with its usual features, like the fast face unlock (360-degree support in tow this time around), the navigation gestures, app locker, and a lot more. I mean, it’s pretty feature-rich and we all know it, but since it’s MIUI, so obviously, the boatload of annoying ads are here as well. Nothing has changed on this front.
Finally, the Redmi Y3 packs a massive 4,000mAh battery as compared to the smaller 3080mAh battery pack on its predecessor, so the battery life should be pretty good, and when it comes to charging, the smartphone comes with a 10W (5V/2A) adapter, which is now becoming a standard in the budget segment.
SEE ALSO: Realme 3 First Impressions: The “Real” Budget Phone?
So, that was a quick look at the brand new Redmi Y3. Xiaomi also launched the Redmi 7 alongside the Y3 and it’s almost identical to the Y3, except for the slightly inferior selfie cameras. Anyway, to conclude things, the Redmi Y3 is another solid budget smartphone from Xiaomi, but pricing it the same as its popular Redmi Note 7 could affect its hype & sales for the tech-aware audience.
