Xiaomi had an excellent 2019, especially in the midrange department. Between the Redmi Note 8 Pro and Mi Note 10, they had a very solid offering and competed even with flagships. You must have been the recent viral pitting the Redmi Note 8 Pro against a Galaxy S20 Ultra, with the Redmi handling gaming better. Anyway, it’s time for a follow-up and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro is here, having been unboxed by us in the video included here. You can find out the first impressions about it below.
Priced at $269, this device has a bigger screen and battery compared to its predecessor. It also swaps the Helio G90T CPU for a Snapdragon 720G and keeps the quad camera with 3 out of the 4 sensors. It only upgrades the Macro cam to 5 megapixels. We have the Tropical Green version of the phone and it’s definitely a looker. It has a two tone approach and it’s very shiny and reflective. The phone also comes in Glacier White and Interstellar Gray.
Inside the box we find a charger (18W), USB-C cable, a case, manual and metal key used to access the slots. Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro measures 8.8 mm in thickness and weighs 209 grams, which is 9 grams heavier than the predecessor, but you can’t really feel it, as it’s a long phone and the weight is well distributed. It’s made of glass and metal, with Gorilla Glass 5 at both the back and front. We also get a fingerprint scanner inside a receded Power button, which doesn’t feel very comfy at first.
The phone is also a bit slippery, so the case quickly becomes a requirement. Upfront we find a 6.67 inch IPS LCD display with a 2400 x 1080 pixel resolution, narrow bezels and a punch hole selfie camera. Inside the phone there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G, an 8 nm CPU, with an Adreno 618 in the mix as well. There’s also 6 GB of RAM here, 64 or 128 GB of storage and a microSD card slot. The battery has grown quite a bit from the Redmi Note 8 Pro, up to a 5020 mAh unit, with 30W charging.
The selfie camera is a 16 MP unit in a punch hole, while the back camera goes like this:
- 64 MP, PDAF, combines 4 pixels in 1
- 8 MP, ultrawide, 119 degrees
- 5 MP, Macro, autofocus between 2 and 10 cm
- 2 MP, Bokeh
It has a small LED flash, a square module that protrudes a bit, 4K video capture and 960 FPS slow mo. There’s AI, Night Mode, a Pro Mode and Portrait. Redmi keeps the audio jack intact and also offers an infrared emitter, used to control a TV set, set top box and more. On the connectivity front there’s WiFi a/b/g/n/ac, as well as Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, Glonass, Galileo and BDS, plus NFC and USB-C. This phone is a dual SIM unit with 4G and it runs on Android 10 with MIUI 11 on top.
The UI is minimalistic, finally has an app drawer and offers a Dark Mode, plus lots of customization options. The phone can be purchased from here and we’ll be back with a full review soon. At first sight, the screen and battery sound like an upgrade, but the CPU sounds like a downgrade. The camera also feels the same as before.
