Xiaomi Redmi 1S was (and still is) an extremely successful product by this Chinese smartphone OEM. Redmi 1S’ solid mid-range specifications and an extremely affordable price made it really a compelling offering by Xiaomi and that company has sold tons of Redmi 1S units in China and India. It would actually be really interesting to see the exact number as far as Redmi 1S sales go, but they did sell A LOT of copies for sure. Xiaomi used to sell tens of thousands Redmi 1S handsets in India alone within seconds via so-called “Flash Sales” in collaboration with India reseller Flipkart, who knows how many they sold in China.
Either way, Redmi 1S was announced back in May, and you might think its successor won’t launch for quite some time now, well, it might. A mysterious Xiaomi device got certified by TENAA (China’s equivalent of the FCC) recently and it seems like this is the 1S’ successor. This device resembles the 1S a whole lot and it carries slightly upgraded specifications, basically everything points to the fact this is the Redmi 2S, or whatever Xiaomi decided to call it. That device just appeared on AnTuTu benchmarks as well as Xiaomi HM2014811. This listing basically goes hand-in-hand with what we’ve seen listed on TENAA and says this handset will sport a 4.7-inch 720p (1280 x 720) display along with 1GB of RAM. Qualcomm’s 64-bit Snapdragon 410 quad-core CPU clocked at 1.2GHz will power on this handset along with an Adreno 306 GPU which ships with this SoC. Android 4.4 KitKat will come pre-installed on this device with Xiaomi’s MIUI on top of it, of course. On the back of this handset, you’ll be able to find an 8-megapixel snapper and an LED flash next to it, while a 2-megapixel shooter will be available on the front.
So, what’s different here compared to the Redmi 1S? Not much to be quite honest, but Xiaomi wanted to keep the same price probably, so they were unable to make significant changes. This Chinese OEM did manage to boost the processor and the front-facing camera though. It looks like this device will run a 64-bit Snapdragon 410 instead of the 32-bit Snapdragon 400 which is powering the original Redmi 1S handset. 2-megapixel shooter on the front is also an upgrade compared to the 1.6-megapixel snapper used in the original device. I’d say this is just enough to make this device appealing again, especially if Xiaomi manages to keep the same price this time around.