Advertisement

In China, $100 already gets you a nice metallic smartphone

But you'll have to buy a plane ticket as well.

Why yes, here's yet another dirt cheap Chinese smartphone from none other than Xiaomi. The Redmi 3 is the company's latest budget device that costs just 699 yuan (about $107) off contract, which is pretty good considering it comes with a metallic body, a generous 4,100 mAh battery, infrared remote feature and a secondary Nano SIM slot (can switch to 4G via software) that doubles as a microSD slot (up to 128GB). Impressively, this Android phone is just 144 grams heavy and 8.5mm thick, courtesy of the improved battery density as featured on the Mi 4i.

Of course, at this price point, you can't expect everything else to be of flagship performance: You get a 5-inch 720p display, an octa-core Snapdragon 616 chipset (4 x 1.5GHz + 4 x 1.2GHz), 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Alas, there's no love for Quick Charge 2.0 here, just the usual 5V/2A input.

There's no word on who supplies the sensors for the main and front cameras, but they should do the job just fine. On the back you have a 13-megapixel f/2.0 imager with phase detection auto focus, manual mode and live filters. As for selfies, there's a 5-megapixel f/2.2 front camera with the usual beautification options. Both cameras support video recording of up to 1080p.

Folks in China can place their orders for the Redmi 3 starting at 10am local time tomorrow, with a color option of either gold, silver or gray for the photolithography pattern finish option, or just gold without the fancy pattern. Of course, if you need a bigger screen, a higher display resolution and a fingerprint reader, then there's also the Redmi Note 3 for your consideration.