Redmi 3S Prime Review – Best Value for Money

We are speculators of the recent storms in the smartphone industry by various manufacturers like Lenovo and Xioami. And Xioami is one tought rider to let go the competition. We all know how the Redmi 3 took everyone by surprise. It is yet another day for Xiaomi with the new Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime. We had recently shown you guys the unboxing video of Redmi 3S Prime and it is time for the complete data on Redmi 3s Prime review.

We shall look at the Specs, Design, Hardware, Software, Camera and Performance separately.

Redmi 3S Prime Specification

• Dimensions: 139.3 x 69.6 x 8.5mm; Weight: 144g
• 5″ HD IPS Display (720*1280)
• 13MP Rear Camera with f/2.0 aperture, LED Flash, PDAF, 1080p Video Recording
• 5MP Front Camera with f/2.2 aperture, 1080p Video Recording
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 64-bit Octa-Core Processor with Adreno 505 GPU
• 3GB LPDDR3 RAM with 32GB internal storage + expandable memory up to 128GB
• 4000mAh battery / 4100mAh (typical)
• Fingerprint sensor (Redmi 3S Prime), Infrared sensor
• MIUI 7 based on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)
• Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano / microSD)
• 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS + GLONASS
• Colours: Dark Grey, Silver, Gold

Design

First thing you notice about design is that you do not see a new eye popping deal, if you have seen a Redmi Note 3 before. But, that is not to say the design is boring. Xiaomi follows its own standards to impress its user base and it certainly matches the market trends as well. The Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime has what is called as the Uni-body Full Metal design.

A combination of shiny metal bezel on the front, brushed metal finish on top and matte finish on rest of the body makes it look very premium. It sits perfectly on your hands without any slippery feel.

The sim tray is on the right side of Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime and Power & Volume buttons are on the left side. There is not much interest in these buttons since this is purely based on users interests (unless it distracts too much). Audio Jack, IR Blaster an a Mic sits on the top, while you have the microUSB and another Mic on the bottom. You have on the back, the fingerprint sensor, led flash, rear camera and speaker.

My take on the fingerprint sensor placed on back is too good. I own a Galaxy Note 5 with a fingerpring sensor on the front. All the time, I had to use it with two hands. But the first use of Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime’s fingerprint sensor makes me feel natural. Meaning it blends perfectly with your hands.

Software / MIUI 7

Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime comes with MIUI 7 which is a forked version of the original Android 6.0.1. MIUI 7 has its own advantages and disadvantages. Since its a customized version specially made for Xiaomi/Mi phones, you have to spend some time with it to get used to it.

If you have used a MIUI or Xioami devices before, you would have probably known that there is no app drawer in MIUI and all the apps are placed right in the homescreen. And, right from the hardware & software design to the usage, you will see a resemblence if iPhone and iOS in many places.

An advantage of MIUI is that, you have a good control of apps and data in terms permissions and security. There are few pre-installed apps (which we call bloatware) just like in any other version of android but you can remove most of them.

Camera

As you might have seen in the spec, Redmi 3s Prime has a 13MP rear camera with flash and a 5MP front camera. Auto Focus (PDAF) is one of the advantages of Xiaomi’s camera.

We have tested the camera for its efficiency on brigt light and low light. The camera fairs well in both the scenarios and the autofocus is good enough for a smartphone on this price range.

As you could see in the pictures taken using Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime, on bright light, the dynamic range is a bit off and on low lights, there is a bit of grains on the pictures. But still, the camera is good enought to take quality pictures.

Performance

An Octa-Core 644-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor (CPU) with Adreno 505 GPU is what Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime has. The phone is designed to suit the needs of day-to-day usage by bringing up the performance while matching the battery life, smoothness of MIUI and display.

On a very heavy stress performance, we did encountered a little lag, a mild heating issue but that’s not something new in the recent market trend. Below are some benchmarks of other smartphones in this price range and how well Redmi 3S Prime faired with the other competitors.

We will soon post a video of gaming performance in Redmi 3s Prime. So stay tuned. And while you wait, pls check our

MI Tips and Tricks

series that we’ve recently been working on

Memory and Battery

Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM in box. The effective usage sums up to 2GB usable RAM and 24GB available memory for user. You can extend it upto 128GB using the hybrid SIM/SD card slot.

The promised battery on Redmi 3S Prime is 4000 mAh and it fairs well in the battery test as well. We have performed a hard core, battery heavy test by,

• More than 2 hours of continuous game play with high brightness
• 2+ Hours of browsing
• Lots of videos & music

Though the battey went up heating a little bit, it eventually cooled down sooner than expected and lasted more than 15 hours to our surprise.

Conclusion – Our Take on Redmi 3s Prime

We had few nice days with Redmi 3s Prime and our verict is that, this would be a better choice under the 10,000 INR budget. Redmi 3s Prime would definitely be the best smartphone in this quarter in terms of RAM, Processor, Storage and performance. For 8,999 this is definitely value for money.