Xiaomi recently launched the Redmi 6 ₹ 8,499 in India, along with the Redmi 6A ₹ 5,999 (Review) and the Redmi 6 Pro ₹ 10,999 (Review). As its name suggests, it is the successor of the Redmi 5 (Review), which has been fairly popular for offering good hardware at affordable prices. The Redmi 6 gets a new processor, has interesting specifications on paper, and is positioned between the Redmi 6A and the Redmi 6 Pro. We have seen smartphones with good hardware but most of them are concentrated around the Rs. 10,000 mark. The Redmi 6 seems to have good hardware at a starting price in India of Rs. 7,999, but is it the best you can get for the price? We put it to the test.
Xiaomi Redmi 6 design
The Redmi series is the entry-level lineup from Xiaomi, and the company has chosen materials to keep the price down. The Redmi 6 is primarily made out of plastic and is built well. It has a 5.45-inch display with a tall and narrow 18:9 aspect ratio. Also on the front of the phone, you’ll find the selfie camera, earpiece, sensors, and a white notification LED that’s tucked in a corner. The back of the Redmi 6 is made out of plastic and is curved at the sides which makes this phone comfortable to hold. Xiaomi has positioned the power and volume buttons on the right, and they offer good feedback. We found the positioning of the power button to be spot on, but the volume buttons are positioned a little too high for our comfort.
On the left side, the phone has two trays. One has the primary SIM and a dedicated microSD card slots, while the other is for the secondary SIM. The loudspeaker is at the back of the phone, while the Micro-USB port is at the bottom along with the primary microphone. The Redmi 6 has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a secondary microphone at the top, but there is no IR emitter, commonly found on Xiaomi smartphones. At the back, the dual-camera module is positioned towards the left, along with a single-LED flash. The fingerprint scanner is well positioned, and either of your index fingers will rest on it naturally when holding this phone.
The Redmi 6 is light, weighing 146gms. It packs in a 3000mAh non-removable battery, and Xiaomi ships a 5W charger in the box to top it up. Like most other Xiaomi smartphones in this price range, the Redmi 6 does not come with headphones in the box. You can take a look at some of the best headphones under Rs. 1,000 in our roundup if you need to buy a pair on a tight budget.
Xiaomi Redmi 6 specifications, features, and software
When it comes to the internals of the Redmi 6, Xiaomi has taken a slightly different approach than usual. Most of Xiaomi’s lineup so far has been powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, but the Redmi 6 and the Redmi 6A are powered by MediaTek processors. The Redmi 6 sports a MediaTek Helio P22. This is an octa-core processor based on a 12nm manufacturing process, and it’s clocked at 2GHz. This phone comes in two variants; one with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and the other with 3GB RAM and 64GB of storage. You can expand storage as this phone accepts microSD cards of up to 256GB.
The Redmi 6’s screen has an HD+ resolution, which works out to 295 pixels per inch. It has decent viewing angles and you do get the option to tweak the display output. While the display is legible under direct sunlight, we would have preferred slightly better brightness.
The dual camera setup at the back consists of a 12-megapixel primary camera and a 5-megapixel depth sensor. There is dual-SIM support on the Redmi 6 with support for both 4G as well as VoLTE. A toggle in the settings app lets the second SIM access data on a 4G network when the primary one is on a call. There is support for Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, GPS, AGPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, and FM Radio. The Redmi 6 also has ambient light and proximity sensors, along with an electronic compass.
The software running on the Redmi 6 is pretty much predictable. This phone runs MIUI 9.6 on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. When we unboxed the smartphone, it was running the June security patch, but soon received the July and August updates. If you have used MIUI and like the user interface, you’ll feel at home while using this smartphone. Xiaomi has made lots of customisations that deviate from the stock Android experience, but there are a few useful features. There is support for multiple gestures and you can also use gesture navigation instead of the traditional navigation buttons. The Redmi 6 features face recognition which lets you unlock it. It isn’t the quickest, but it worked in most lighting conditions.
Spammy notifications by preinstalled apps, Dual-SIM settings on the Redmi 6
There are useful additions like Dual Apps, which lets you run two instances of supported apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook, among others. Second Space lets you keep files, messages, and other data locked down. MIUI also has an inbuilt App Lock that lets you restrict access to apps using your fingerprint. While MIUI has some interesting features, it does come with a fair amount of bloatware. Microsoft’s suite of apps come preinstalled, along with Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, PhonePe, and UC Browser. Xiaomi’s own apps including Mi Community, Mi Video, Mi Store, Mi Drop, Security, and Cleaner also find spots on the Redmi 6. Apart from the Google Play Store, there’s another store called Apps. We found some of Xiaomi’s apps to be spammy, and annoying notifications kept on popping up. While you can go ahead and uninstall most of these apps, some can only be disabled.
Xiaomi Redmi 6 performance, cameras, and battery life
The Helio P22 powering the Redmi 6 managed to surprise us with its performance. We could go through the menus and scroll through MIUI without any noticeable lag or stutter. However, like with most low-end processors, it takes some time to load heavy apps. We also saw instances when the Redmi 6 had to reload apps since they were no longer in memory.
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