Xiaomi Redmi 5

A trend which started with Xiaomi's flagship smartphone, the Mi Mix, has now made its way over to the company's budget offerings. You guessed it, I am talking about the Redmi 5's bezel-less design which immediately gives the smartphone an edge over the competitor's bezel-laden offerings. With that said, while Xiaomi has increased the screen-to-body ratio of the smartphone, the company has refrained from making any changes to the Redmi 5's blueprint. In fact, from the back, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the Redmi Note 5, the Redmi 5 and the Redmi Note 4.

The cameras on the Xiaomi Redmi 5 are a bit of a sore point. In terms of specs, the handset features 12MP and 5MP sensors on the back and the front respectively. There's a dedicated flash module present for both the camera sensors too, which helps with lowlight photography. Unfortunately, I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the images shot from the Redmi 5. In situations with ample lighting, the smartphone manages to deliver decent quality pics with natural-looking colours. However, the smartphone takes a while to latch on to the subject and even then, the macro shots are often blurred. The low-light performance of the smartphone is nothing to write home about either, and the images I clicked with the device had substantial grain in them.

The Xiaomi Redmi 5 is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 450 processor which works alongside either 2GB, 3GB or 4GB of RAM, depending upon which variant you opt for. Correspondingly, you'll get either 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage with the phone which can be further expanded by means of a microSD card. I had the 3GB / 32GB variant for review. As far as the performance is concerned, I was pleasantly surprised with the Snapdragon 450's capabilities. Having previously reviewed the Redmi 5A which shipped with a Snapdragon 425 processor, I can confidently say that those upgrading to the Redmi 5 will observe a significant bump in the performance. Navigating through the UI was noticeably better on the Redmi 5, as was opening and closing applications. Moreover, my gaming sessions on the smartphone weren't just limited to some PvP battles in Clash Royale and I could run more demanding titles like Unkilled too, albeit with slightly toned-down graphics settings.