Xiaomi is in for a fight

Xiaomi’s budget offerings have had free reign in the lower end of the market for quite a while now, with very few worthy opponents in terms of both price and performance. That’s changed this year, and the Redmi 7A will be doing battle with a lot of other really good smartphones in the same price range this year. Let’s take a look at what you’ll get when you do decide to pick up the phone:

Packaging and contents:

There are no surprises here when it comes to the packaging of the Redmi 7A – it comes in the same white box with red trim on the bottom that other phones in the budget Redmi catalog comes in.

There’s not a lot of freebies inside: you get the phone, charger and USB cable, and that’s it.

No-frills design is a plus for many

Since the Redmi 7A is a budget phone, the device doesn’t have a lot of visual frills: the phone is made from matte polycarbonate and comes in three colors: Blue, Black and Gold. Our review device came in Black, and externally it looks pretty simple, with curved edges giving it better ergonomics when you’re handling it one-handed.

While the phone’s design is somewhat plain, the upside here is that there isn’t really a finish to ruin so you can choose to run the phone without a silicone case if you choose to.

The rear of the phone is pretty clean since the Redmi 7A doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner, and uses a single 12-megapixel camera tucked on the upper left side, with an LED flash right below it.

We took a few shots with the phone’s camera, which we’ve attached below:

The power and volume buttons are on the right, with the MicroSD/SIM slot on the left side. The 3.5mm jack is on top, with the USB port and speaker grille on the bottom.

Up front is the 5.45-inch HD+ IPS panel with a 1440 x 720 resolution panel. There’s no water-drop notch here, just thick bezels on the top and bottom of the panel.

While the phone doesn’t have a physical fingerprint scanner, you can rely on the 5-megapixel front camera to unlock the device, or rely on a traditional PIN.

Powering the phone is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 439 processor, along with either 2GB/3GB of RAM and 16GB/32GB of storage, depending on what variant of the device you buy.

The Snapdragon 439 chipset feels quick and zippy, though the limited storage and RAM for the basic version is a huge limiting factor especially for people who would like to use the phone for gaming.

Just like other phones made by Xiaomi, the Redmi 7A comes with Android 9 Pie along with the company’s MIUI overlay.

One bright spot here is the phone’s battery, which comes in at 4000mAh. We ran a battery benchmark as soon as we got the phone, and the Redmi 7A delivered an excellent 15 hour and 35 minute result on PCMark’s battery benchmark.

We’re still reviewing the Redmi 7A, but the phone is already in Mi Authorized Stores for Php 4,790 for the 2GB/16GB version and Php 5,290 for the 2GB/32GB version.

Redmi 7A specs

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 octa-core processor
• 2GB/3GB RAM
• 5.45-inch HD+ display
• 16GB/32GB internal storage
• 13-megapixel main rear camera with PDAF, LED flash
• 5-megapixel front camera
• Dual SIM
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
• Face unlock, P2i coating
• 4000mAh battery
• Android Pie with MIUI