14 DAY TRIAL // Xiaomi fans might know that the Chinese company had already launched its mid-range Redmi 3 Android smartphone a few months ago. The Redmi 3 is now available for purchase in China and a few other emerging markets in Asia, but the phone lacks at least one important feature: a fingerprint scanner.
The original Xiaomi Redmi 3 comes with a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720p) resolution, as well as a massive 4,100 mAh battery, which is probably the phone’s main selling point.
On the inside, the Redmi 3 packs a 64-bit 1.5GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor, an Adreno 405 graphics processing unit, and 2GB of RAM.
Unfortunately for those who were expecting the Redmi 3 to include a fingerprint sensor, Xiaomi did not add this feature in the smartphone released back in January.
It comes with a similar metal body and diamond pattern design
The good news is a modified version of Redmi 3 has been spotted recently at TENAA, the Chinese regulatory commission. This particular smartphone packs a fingerprint scanner on the rear side. The latter features the same diamond pattern on the back side, which is made out of 4,166 stars that become visible when light falls on it at a particular angle.
But not all is great about the Redmi 3, as Xiaomi has decided that adding a similar 4,100 mAh battery inside would be bad for business. According to the listing at TENAA, the Redmi 3 drains energy from a much smaller 3,000 mAh battery.
The rest of the phone’s features are similar to the standard model, so expect the same all-metal unibody design, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, and 5-megapixel secondary camera on the front.
The new Xiaomi Redmi 3 will come with Android Lollipop operating system onboard and MIUI 7 on top of it. Also, it will include both 4G LTE and hybrid dual-SIM support.
There’s no word on exactly when the smartphone will be officially introduced, but we doubt this modified version will benefit from too much advertising from Xiaomi, so expect a quiet launch in the next couple of weeks. It will probably be released as Xiaomi Redmi 3 Prime.