Redmi 7a

In the steady stream of launching smartphones, the Redmi 7A is the latest and seemingly targeted at first-time smartphone buyers. This phone brings a tonne of upgrades, both significant and subtle over the previous version Redmi 6A that to without the price hike that often accompanies a new-generation device. The Redmi 7A thankfully does away with the easily recognisable ‘low-cost Redmi’ look and switches to a clean unibody design. On the advantageous side, the Redmi 7A is quite comfortable to hold with the rounded corners and the matte finish on the back feel good in the hand. The phone sports a 5.45-inch HD+ (720×1440 pixels) display along with an 18:9 aspect ratio. The 7A’s display is an IPS panel with an HD+ resolution.

The Redmi 7A is the first phone in the entry-level Redmi ‘A’ sub-series that comes with an octa-core processor, deriving power from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 SoC which has eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2GHz. This is quite a significant upgrade over the quad-core MediaTek Helio A22 ticking inside the Redmi 6A. The phone comes in two variants with 16GB and 32GB of internal storage, but the amount of RAM remains the same at 2GB.

The phone comprises a 12-megapixel Sony IMX486 sensor with larger 1.25micron pixels, which is much better than the previous 13-megapixel snapper on the Redmi 6A. Another front of an upgrade over its predecessor is battery capacity. The phone comes equipped with a 4,000mAh battery, which is a whopping 33 per cent larger than the 3,000mAh unit inside the Redmi 6A. It comes with a 10W charger.

On the software side, the Redmi 7A runs MIUI 10 based on Android 9 Pie. Our review unit ran the June security patch. If you have used MIUI before, you’ll feel right at home. Casual arcade games such as Temple Run and Candy Crush ran without a hitch, but problems start arising with graphic-intense ones like PUBG and asphalt Mobile.