# Xiaomi Redmi Note 3: an astonishing bargain phablet



## editor (Mar 7, 2016)

I've never played with one myself but it's picking up rave reviews at a ridiculously cheap price, e.g. £118.27 plus import duty from China (16GB storage, 2GB RAM)







> The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 may not be best suited to UK users out of the box, but with some simple setup tweaks it is an excellent budget Android phone with a fantastic design and performance for the price.
> The first all-metal budget phablet from China's Apple is a stunner





> The biggest selling point of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is its value. At the time of publishing, the phone sits at $182 on Gearbest. That’s a great price for an unlocked phone, regardless of specs. Then you start looking deeper at the package you’re getting. Two day battery, great screen, fast processor, all metal build.
> 
> It’s one of, if not the best values on the market.





> s we pointed out in the introduction, it's not possible to buy Xiaomi phones directly from the company in the UK, although you can buy them from third-party unofficial channels. Our review sample came from GearBest, and is the gold model with 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. This Note 3 costs £118.27 with free worldwide shipping, although you should note that on shipping it to the UK you may have to pay import duty, and other pitfalls may be involved - read our advice on buying grey-market tech.
> 
> GearBest also sells the more advanced variant of the Redmi Note 3, which has 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM. This phone costs £138. See all budget smartphone reviews.


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## LeslieB (Mar 9, 2016)

Edit: pathetic joke. Sorry


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## unrepentant85 (Apr 4, 2016)

Very tempted. The standard 16gb is now £104 + shipping on gearbest.


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## scifisam (Apr 4, 2016)

At 16 gig you'll have trouble with apps. The SD card solution doesn't work for some of them and it's not like you actually have 16 gig to play with given how much of it is needed to run the device. Still, it might be better than other 16 gig devices.


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## unrepentant85 (Apr 4, 2016)

I think the price blinded me a bit. Just compared it to my htc m8 and that has better specs.


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## LeslieB (Apr 4, 2016)

16gb should be OK for most people, surely? I admit 32gb would be better but many phones at that price only have 8gb

I don't know how good gearbest are, but you are always taking a bit of a punt with a site from outside the UK/EU.  But then again you take a punt when you buy second hand too.  Just don't spend more than (worst case) you could afford to lose.

* EDIT- important. From the link Ed posted. "In the UK, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 operates on only the UK 4G LTE bands 3 and 7, which means band 20 (or the 800MHz) frequency used by O2 and piggyback networks such as giffgaff is not supported."*


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## scifisam (Apr 4, 2016)

My S4's 16 gig and it's having problems due to the memory. Everything that can be moved to the SD card has been, but some stuff refuses to move and 5 gig is taken up by the phone's services. Apps are getting more and more memory-hungry too. I wouldn't bother with a 16 gig phone again.

Edit: Just tried to download Samsung smart switch because I'm being given someone else's s4 (I still like the device - my screen's cracked and this other one isn't) and couldn't. It's actually almost 7 gig being taken up by essential services and another 5 gig or so being taken up by crap like Hangouts that come preinstalled and can't be deleted plus "miscellaneous files" that aren't my photos or PDFs or anything - they're all on the SD card. So really it's about 4 gig for me to use. I doubt other brands are better.


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## Nemesisuk (Apr 4, 2016)

scifisam said:


> My S4's 16 gig and it's having problems due to the memory. Everything that can be moved to the SD card has been, but some stuff refuses to move and 5 gig is taken up by the phone's services. Apps are getting more and more memory-hungry too. I wouldn't bother with a 16 gig phone again.
> 
> Edit: Just tried to download Samsung smart switch because I'm being given someone else's s4 (I still like the device - my screen's cracked and this other one isn't) and couldn't. It's actually almost 7 gig being taken up by essential services and another 5 gig or so being taken up by crap like Hangouts that come preinstalled and can't be deleted plus "miscellaneous files" that aren't my photos or PDFs or anything - they're all on the SD card. So really it's about 4 gig for me to use. I doubt other brands are better.


Have you considered rooting? Then remove those apps you don't need.


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## LeslieB (Apr 4, 2016)

I wonder why so many apps won't work from an SD card? It is a real pain. That said, I doubt you'll get more than 16gig of storage at that price point.


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## scifisam (Apr 4, 2016)

Nemesisuk said:


> Have you considered rooting? Then remove those apps you don't need.



I've looked it up but it's beyond my capabilities, I'm afraid. It's bearable, but given that apps are getting bigger I don't think getting a new phone with 16 gig would be a wise idea unless you barely use your phone as anything other than a phone, in which case there are cheaper options.



LeslieB said:


> I wonder why so many apps won't work from an SD card? It is a real pain. That said, I doubt you'll get more than 16gig of storage at that price point.



I have the impression that it takes more skill to make the app work from an SD card too, because major apps like Facebook can be moved over no problem but things like a German-English dictionary can't.


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## pardon (May 4, 2016)

one thing to be aware of with these is there are two variants, one based on a snapdragon  cpu and chipset the other based on mediatek chipsets.There are well established power consumption issues with the mediatek chipsets so its the snapdragon chipset you want.


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