Redmi Note 7 Review

Announced on 10 January 2019, the Note 7 was the first phone Redmi released after Xiaomi spun it out as a separate brand, and it set the pattern for everything the brand did after. The China price was CNY 999 for 3GB/32GB, about $145, and it never launched in the US, so the price here is that conversion; India got it at Rs 9,999. For that you had Gorilla Glass 5 on both faces, a gradient back, a 6.3-inch 1080p LCD with a small waterdrop notch, Snapdragon 660, a 4000mAh battery that went two days for light use, a headphone jack, an IR blaster and USB-C. The 48MP Samsung GM1 sensor binned down to 12MP shots that were good in daylight and better than the price suggested, though the Pro model with the Sony IMX586 was the one to have.

Redmi backed it with an 18-month warranty and its marketing showed the phone cracking walnuts to make the point about the glass. Fast charging was 18W Quick Charge 4, but the box held a 10W brick. The failing was, as always, MIUI. Version 10 over Android 9 put ads in the settings app, the file manager and the notification shade, and turning them off meant hunting through a dozen toggles.

Two Android updates followed, to Android 10 under MIUI 12, and then it was done. The series shipped twenty million units in seven months for a reason: the hardware is honest and it lasted.