Xiaomi’s Redmi Note series has always been popular in Indian smartphone market. Today the company has introduced the Redmi Note 9 series at an online event with two new phones – Redmi Note 9 Pro and Redmi Note 9 Pro Max. For now, the company is selling Redmi Note 9 Pro and Note 9 Pro Max will go on sale later this month. We got our hands on the Redmi Note 9 Pro and here’s our first impressions of the same.
Glass Sandwich Design
Redmi Note 9 Pro comes with a glass sandwich design that looks quite premium from the back side. The back panel also has Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The quad rear cameras are housed in a squared module with a bump. The phone also feels bulky because of that and because of big battery, it has 210g weight as well.
It comes in Interstellar Black, Aurora Blue, and Glacier White colors and we got blue color model which looked quite cool.
The front is now replaced by a punch-hole screen instead of the water drop notch. The bezels are minimum which make the display look immersive.
If we talk about button placement, the volume rockers and the power button are on the right and the power button also houses the fingerprint scanner, just like the POCO X2.
The 3.5mm audio jack, type C port,a mic speaker grill are present at the bottom and the top part has an IR blaster and a secondary mic. The left side has a card tray that can house two SIM cards and one microSD.
Punch-hole Display
The Redmi Note 9 Pro sports a 6.67-inch Full HD+(2400 × 1080 pixels) LCD Display. It comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection.
The phone comes with a tiny punch-hole on display, and the bezels are bare minimum because of that display looks even bigger and offers an immersive experience for watching videos.
Further, it has Widevine L1 certification and can play FULL HD content on streaming services like NetFlix and Amazon Prime. The brightness of the display is also very good.
Overall, the display quality seemed good with vibrant colors, good brightness and right viewing angles.
Snapdragon 720G Processor
Redmi Note 9 Pro is powered by a new Snapdragon 720G 8nm processor that has 2x 2.3GHz Kryo 465 A76 CPUs and 6x 1.8GHz Kryo 465 A55 CPUs with Adreno 618 GPU.
Snapdragon 720G processor is positioned below the Snapdragon 730G and so it offers an average performance for a mid-range phone. However, you can play games like PUBG and Asphalt 9 without any glitch. Multitasking is also smooth.
Interestingly, Snapdragon 720G brings support for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, NavIC.
The phone is paired with up to 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and up to 128GB UFS 2.1 storage. This storage offers fast read and write speeds. It is also expandable up to 256GB with microSD.
48MP Quad Camera
The Redmi Note 9 Pro sports quad rear cameras with a 48MP primary Samsung ISOCELL GM2 sensor with f/1.79 aperture, an 8MP 120° ultra-wide-angle lens, a 5MP 2cm macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. The 48MP sensor has 0.8μm pixel size, supports PDAF and EIS and it can record 4K videos at 30fps.
The front camera is 16MP shooter.
We will tell about the camera results in our full review.
Latest Software
The smartphone runs on the latest MIUI 11 which is based on Android 10. The latest UI has some improvements but it is still has bloatware apps that will annoy you with push notifications. However you can uninstall some of these apps.
Big Battery
The Note 9 Pro is powered by a massive 5,020mAh battery that comes with support for 18W fast charging and the fast charger comes bundled in-box. The battery is enough for a day’s use even if you’re a heavy user.
Wrapping Up
In our initial testing, the Redmi Note 9 Pro looks impressive by both looks and performance. It has all the features that are required in a phone that costs less than Rs. 15k. So, for now Redmi Note 9 Pro is a good option in this segment and wait for our full review to know the real verdict on this phone.
