This year has only started and Xiaomi is already all over the place. This Chinese smartphone manufacturer has already released one device on January 4th, their extremely affordable mid-range Redmi 2 handset. Company’s CEO has already announced that they’ll release their new flagship this month as well, on January 15, and we’ve been getting all sorts of additional reports from China. The ultra-thin Snapdragon 615-powered handset is also a possibility and could be released this month, as well as the Redmi Note 2. Not all of these devices will be released in January, of course, but at least one more will, perhaps even two.
That being said, you might recall that we talked about a sub-$100 Xiaomi phone way back, and by sub-$100 I mean 399 Yuan ($65), at least that’s what the reports were suggesting. Several reports claimed that the company is working on a Leadcore-powered LTE smartphone which will be extremely affordable and yet quite capable, the phone even hit TENAA (China’s equivalent of the FCC) back in December. This Leadcore-powered Xiaomi-branded handset got certified by TENAA once again, what’s the difference between the two listings? Well, the model number is different, the phone is shown off in a different color here and this device’s processor is clocked at 1.6GHz while the earlier model sported a 1.5GHz clock rate.
Anyhow, according to the listing, this handset will support GSM / TD-SCDMA / TD-LTE networks and is a dual-SIM (dual-standby) device. The device will feature a 4.7-inch 720p (1280 x 720) display along with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Leadcore’s LC1860C quad-core chip clocked at 1.6GHz will power on this device, and the phone will ships with Android 4.4.4 KitKat with Xiaomi’s MIUI on top of it, of course. 8-megapixel camera will be located at the back of this handset, while you’ll be able to find a 2-megapixel snapper on its front side. The aforementioned Leadcore chip ships with a Mali T628 GPU and is based on a 28nm manufacturing process (Cortex-A7 architecture). This handset actually looks like the Redmi 2 on the outside, which is interesting.
That’s basically it. This phone is expected to hit the market soon considering it got certified by TENAA, and it seems this is the final model. LTE connectivity, a quad-core chip, 1GB of RAM and an 8-megapixel camera for 399 Yuan ($65)… seems impossible? Well, it might be, but this is Xiaomi, if someone can do it, it’s them. The price might not be as low, but this will be a sub-$100 device for sure.
