It’s been quite a while since the announcement of this particular phone, and I have been trying to find the right words to talk about it. Since then, Xiaomi has announced 3 more Redmi Note 10 variants and brought back an older version to life. But since this is still a review, this particular review is going to revolve around the Redmi Note 10 and I am going to touch into something that’s a little unconventional from our usual review – especially if you read our title.
Keeping it Short and Simple
The Redmi Note 10 is the successor to the previous Redmi Note 9 smartphone series and honestly, successor to no specific model honestly because of its odd naming scheme and sorts. So, over here it brings backs a conventional design that isn’t going to wow anyone or even get anyone excited in anyway – vanilla so to speak. The Redmi Note 9S had a design which looked good with its centered camera and a nice design, but this one – well, the usual corner camera and a basic design. It’s covered in this plastic body of sorts and personally, I miss the metal body Redmi Note smartphones of yesteryears.
Performance Wise
What you get under the hood is what you must live with – a decent Qualcomm Processor, Snapdragon 678 paired with a choice of 4GB or 6GB RAM and 64GB or 128GB storage, respectively. It isn’t going to blow one’s mind, but the processor is sufficient for someone who only needs it to be used for acceptable tasks like socializing, a little bit of entertainment and moderate gaming. It does struggle to put up with games that requires higher intensive graphics and gets warm to the touch. But if your use case involves pretty much the rest without gaming, then its fine.
It’s a Xiaomi Camera
If a brand believes hardware is the only way you could improve a camera, it would be Xiaomi because software wise it has done little to no improvements to bring a better color science and image quality to the table – and just as much as I’ve tried with my previous generation of Mi phones, some of the problems still persist.
Expect it to take good day light pictures – thanks to its 48MP Wide-Angle Camera and 8MP Ultra-Wide camera which is the only two functional cameras on the phone. Once the sun sets, the quality sets with the sun as the lowlight pictures have some grainy texture with some chromatic aberration at the edges of the images where it isn’t sharp at all. In fact, in day light images where you take picture of an object, there is a hazy texture to it. The other two sensors – the Macro and Depth is a sensor we will never consider as a camera as it offers no significant value to a user in anyway.
The Other Stuff
It has a side mounted fingerprint sensor that works great and it’s a physical sensor, I love that. The display is an AMOLED Panel with a camera cutout on the top that has a silver hint – like why do you want to put that and ruin a phone’s look? But it’s a great display. Not to forget a 5000mAh battery that lasts well.
All these stuff with the phone and we chose to not recommend this phone at all. In fact, call it a buyer’s remorse, why is that?
Xiaomi Killed their own Phone
Generally, when a brand launches a new product – its meant to be the generational upgrade for that year and a phone users should get. Competitors will make something to go head-to-head which is healthy. What isn’t healthy is that, just a month after, releasing more phones in the lineup which cannibalizes their other phones, case in point, the Redmi Note 10 makes no absolute sense of any kind. Not just that, here’s a fun fact – our review sample aside, I personally purchased a Redmi Note 10 thinking it’s a good phone for my dad, only to realize that the following week – there’s a new Redmi Note 10 Series – making consumers lose faith in the brand and lose their hard-earned money on something that’s cannibalized already in just a month.
We have a lot to say, trust us, we are not happy with that strategy.
Conclusion
The Redmi Note 10 is not a bad phone entirely, sure it has its own flaws – I mean, which mid-tier phone doesn’t. But to have something like this happen, this is like those top one betrayal to customers and as a consumer myself, I felt it. You are better off purchasing a different phone but just not this. That’s all we can say. And this time, it isn’t a competitor that made us not recommend this phone, it’s the brand itself that made this happen. We held this review for a good amount of time to see if Xiaomi cannibalizes their own smartphone, they proved us right.
Special thanks to Xiaomi Malaysia for sending this review sample to make this content happen.
