Xiaomi makes well-built, affordable handsets and sells tons of them in China and India. Xiaomi Redmi 1S is quite probably the best-selling handset of this Chinese OEM. This is an extremely affordable and yet, well-equipped smartphone which features a 4.7-inch 720p (1280 x 720) display, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable internal storage. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor is powering on this device and that’s yet another big plus here. Keep in mind that this handset costs only about $100 in China, which is just insane considering the specs and build quality. Redmi 1S’ successor has been rumored for quite some time now and it seems like this handset has just been certified by TENAA (China’s equivalent of the FCC), which basically means it will launch rather soon. Let’s see what the device has to offer.
The certified device definitely look like the Redmi 1S and I can say that this is, without a doubt, the successor of that handset. The capacitive buttons have been redesigned and the speaker grill and the LED flash are positioned different on the back side of the device, but other than that, this is basically the spitting image of Redmi 1S. According to the listing, this device will feature a 4.7-inch 720p (1280 x 720) display along with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable internal storage. This handset is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, the brand isn’t listed on TENAA, but I’m rather certain Xiaomi will include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 chip in there, it seems logical considering the original Redmi 1S handset is powered by the Snapdragon 400 chip. As far as cameras go, 8-megapixel camera is listed as this handset’s rear-facing shooter, while there’s a 2-megapixel front-facing camera listed as well. Android 4.4.4 KitKat will come pre-installed on this device and LTE connectivity will also be part of the package. This smartphone measures 134 x 67.21 x 9.2mm while it weighs 132 grams, which makes is smaller, narrower, thinner and lighter than the original Redmi 1S.
The device will be available in White, Black, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple and Blue color options and will quite probably be called the Redmi 2S, I just can’t see Xiaomi picking a different naming for this handset, this makes sense. This doesn’t seem like a huge upgrade over the original Redmi 1S, but the Android 4.4.4 KitKat comes out of the box here, not to mention you also get the LTE connectivity along with the device, and it seems like the CPU will get a bump as well, though that’s just my guess, who knows, perhaps Xiaomi decides to keep the Snapdragon 400 in there. Either way, this handset will hopefully get launched soon.
