Xiaomi Redmi Y3 64GB

The Redmi Y3's claim to fame is its 32MP front-facing camera, which makes use of Samsung's GD1 sensor. As it stands, only a handful of devices in the country sport the sensor, including the Huawei P30 Pro, which is much, much more expensive than the Y3. Now, I click a lot of selfies as it is and naturally, I was excited to take the selfie shooter out for a spin. And, after a week of clicking photos with the phone, I must say, I'm not disappointed in the slightest.Photos I clicked with the device's front-facing camera during the day had ample details and vibrant colours. As I mentioned previously, I took the device with me on a trip to Agra, which at this time of the year, is bright and sunny. Consequently, I was able to get away with some of the most detailed selfies I've ever seen on a smartphone. What's more, with the HDR mode turned on, the Y3's selfie shooter was able to resolve the details in overexposed shots too.To give you a better picture (no pun intended), here's a comparison of the smartphone's selfie prowess with and without the HDR mode turned on. As can be clearly seen, the blue colour in the sky, as well as the green in the leaves, is much clearer with HDR on.I was also quite impressed with the selfie shooter's ability to click near-perfect portrait shots. Even with a lot of people in the background, the Y3's front-camera retained its focus on my face and managed to create a convincing blur effect. Now, granted, it is a tad bit rough around the edges and the shooter struggled to separate parts of my ears from the background. But, given the Y3's low price point, I am willing to give the smartphone a pass on this one.If you're into beautifying your selfies, then you'll get a ton of options on the Redmi Y3, including the ability to change your skin tone and smoothen out the blemishes. However, since I prefer more natural-looking portraits, I turned the feature off. Moreover, much like most other devices in the market, the Redmi Y3 also offers a built-in screen flash functionality which should get you a decent image at night. That said, you'll miss out on the details in the background if you opt to use the feature. While the Redmi Y3's 32MP front camera is among the best in its class, the performance of the smartphone's rear cameras is nothing to write home about. The device ships with a pair of 12MP and 2MP sensors on the back, which click good photos when it's sunny outdoors. The images I shot with the device had plenty of details, exhibited natural colours and with the HDR turned on, I could see noticeably more details in the highlights and the shadows. On the whole, the picture quality was on par with the competition, so you'll find little to complain here.Unfortunately, owing to the lens' relatively smaller f/2.2 aperture, the image quality took a hit when it was dark outdoors. In fact, the Realme 3 (review), which ships with an f/1.8 aperture lens, had lesser grain and noise as compared to Redmi Y3. Consequently, while you'll be able to click good photos with the Y3 during the day, you'll have to be a bit more selective as to where you use the camera at night.

It's baffling how good affordable phones have become, especially in the performance department. Nowadays, most wallet-friendly options ship with a speedy mid-tier chip from either Qualcomm or MediaTek's stables, which was unheard of a few years ago. The Redmi Y3 features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 632 chip which works alongside either 3GB or 4GB of RAM. Correspondingly, you'll get either 32GB or 64GB of built-in, user-expandable storage. Now, having used the phone for the better part of a week, I can tell you that I don't have any major issues with the smartphone's performance. The device zipped through resource hungry applications like Instagram and I could even play intensive games like PUBG on the phone, albeit at lower graphics settings. That said, if you're the type to juggle between multiple applications, then you'll want to buy the 4GB RAM variant of the device.You see, my review unit - which shipped with 3GB of RAM - struggled to keep multiple applications open in memory. That could be in part due to the smartphone's custom skin, which sucks up a fair bit of the system's resources. Therefore, even with just a handful of apps in memory, I often had to wait for Apple Music to bring up my playlist from scratch, or reload a webpage on Google Chrome.Coming to the smartphone's software, I must admit, I'm not the biggest fan of the device's custom skin. While Xiaomi's MIUI has come a long way, it's littered with ads and between the promoted apps section in folders and the built-in app scanner which suggests different apps to install every time you download one from the Play Store, I was irrevocably irked with the device's UI. Thankfully, you can turn the ad pop-ups off.That said, not all is grim and gloomy with the company's custom skin. In fact, there are a fair bit of useful utilities which come bundled with MIUI, such as the ability to choose how big of a display you want when you're using the smartphone's one-hand mode, gesture-based navigation, the option to theme your device and so on and so forth.You can even open two instances of applications like WhatsApp and Facebook, create a second space to protect your personal data, or tweak the EQ as per your liking when you connect a pair of headphones to the phone. Everything considered, MIUI does have quite a few nifty features, but the user experience can be improved a bit.As far as the battery life of the smartphone is concerned, the Redmi Y3 ships with a beefy 4,000mAh battery which comfortably saw me through the end of the day on heavy usage. On my recent trip to Agra, I used the device intensively to click photos, share updates on various social media platforms, use maps to navigate my way around the city and listen to music. Despite that, I ended the day with at least 20 percent battery still in the tank. Much to my surprise, the handset didn't last very long in our battery drain test, where it managed to play a looping video for 15 hours.