Many Android flagships in 2017 boasted of taller screens with nearly no borders as their headlining feature. Naturally, we started seeing this trend trickle down to the mid-range and entry-level segments, with phones like the InFocus Vision 3[1] (Review[2]) and Honor 9 Lite[3] (Review[4]) to name a few. Xiaomi[5] has been a favourite in the budget space and now it's joining the party.
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4[6] (Review[7]) has been the ranked[8] as the top selling smartphone in 2017, so expectations for the Chinese manufacturer’s brand new offerings for 2018 are incredibly high. The new Redmi Note 5[9] (Review[10]) has big shoes to fill and from what we’ve seen[11], it manages to do so pretty well. Xiaomi has also launched a more powerful model with a better camera, and it's called the Redmi Note 5 Pro[12]. This is the first phone to debut Qualcomm’s[13] new Snapdragon 636 mobile platform[14], which supports full-HD+ displays and features Qualcomm's own custom Kryo CPU cores. While all of this sounds great on paper, the big question is whether it’s worth the premium over the standard Redmi Note 5. Let’s find out.
From the front, the Redmi Note 5 Pro looks very similar to the Redmi Note 5, with the same prominent curved corners on the 18:9 display. The phone still has visible borders to the left and right of the display and comparatively thicker ones at the top and bottom. It does feel slightly heavy at 181g, which could be due to the metal back and large battery. The white and gold trim of our review unit looked good, but you can also get this phone...