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Somewhere in the smartphone’s journey, the front camera began to take precedence over the primary camera. Thanks to our obsession with ourselves, selfie phones began to appear on the market in droves. But Xiaomi wasn’t responsible for any of these, until now. The Chinese company’s Redmi Y1 is the first in a series of what will be front camera-focused devices.
The recently launched Y1 is an ordinary enough looking phone, following the same-old design. Pale gold on the back, white on the front for the unit I have. You’ve seen it before on most budget phones. Standard size at 5.5 inches, standard fingerprint sensor on the back, standard everything. But this time, you get a 16 MP selfie camera with beautifying features. On using it I found a vast improvement over my real appearance, so naturally, I’m happy with it. On by default when you open the front camera is their diffused selfie light, which doesn’t shine horribly right into your eyes and actually helps get a better photo. The rear 13 MP camera is unimpressive. The colours don’t quite add up and indoor images are a little murky.
The Y1 is light, slim and easy to carry. The plastic on the back looks like metal and that’s not a bad thing. It works pretty well and fast with the Snapdragon 435 SoC, though it often warms up. You get 32 GB or 64 GB storage with a memory slot that’s additional to the slots for two SIMs, both of which support 4G VoLTE though only one SIM can use 4G at a given time. The battery is a 3,080 mAh unit and it performs very well.
The Y1 runs Android Nougat and the newest MIUI 9. In the face of cleaner Android phones with lighter interfaces, I am beginning to find Xiaomi’s MiUI 9 very busy, filled with pre-loaded apps and stuffed with customisations. But I may be the exception as fans are more than happy with Xiaomi’s feature-rich take on Android. But undoubtedly MiUI 9 works faster than its previous avatars.
When considering the Y1, be aware that there are two variants, plus a Y1 Lite, which at ₹6,999 seems to be selling at a rapid clip. Many of Xiaomi’s other Redmi phones, including the solid Redmi 4, also compete with this device.
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