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Redmi Note 10 Review: A Value Workhorse for 2021

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Redmi Note 10 Review: A Value Workhorse for 2021
With the new Redmi Note 10 family, Xiaomi is offering more premium features than ever, but prices have also risen. The Redmi Note series has been massively popular so far in India, where everyone loves a good deal and buyers are very particular about every last feature and specification. If a smartphone has a big screen, high-capacity battery, fast processor, and lots of RAM and storage, but still manages to cost less than Rs. 15,000, chances are it will be successful. That’s where the Redmi Note 10 comes in.Priced at Rs. 11,999 (4GB RAM/64GB storage) and Rs. 13,999 (6GB RAM, 128GB storage), the Redmi Note 10 doesn’t have a massive 108-megapixel rear camera like the much more premium Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (First Impressions). It also doesn’t have a 120Hz display like the middle sibling, the Redmi Note 10. Still, the three share a lot of features and design touches, and you might be surprised by what the complete package has to offer.

Redmi Note 10 design

Xiaomi has introduced a new “Evol” design language which freshens up the Redmi Note 10 series a bit. There’s little scope for differentiation on smartphones, and the main bit of design flair we see is the camera module on the rear. The four lenses, all of different sizes, are arranged in a chunky but rounded panel that protrudes by about 1mm from the rear.

The rest of the rear panel is completely plain if you choose the Frost White or Shadow Black options, though the Aqua Green colour does have a slight gradient. Each of the three has a matching frame, which is flattened on the top and bottom. The rear panel curves at the sides to offer a comfortable grip. I liked the matte texture of the rear panel, and it doesn’t get smudged very easily which means this phone still looks good after being used for a while.

Thanks to the 6.43-inch screen and its relatively narrow borders, the Redmi Note 10 is actually quite easy to hold and manage. At 8.3mm thick and 178.8g in weight, even one-handed use isn’t much of a problem. The Redmi Note 10 is not only easier to handle than the Redmi Note 9, but also pretty convenient overall, considering its features and price.

One design touch I don’t quite like is the silver ring around the front camera, which is embedded into the top-centre of the screen. It’s highly reflective and can be distracting when gaming or watching video, which defeats the entire purpose of having an embedded camera. The fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power button on the side. It’s quite small and shaped like a regular button rather than being slightly recessed. It seemed quick and accurate enough in use, even with such a small surface area.

The Redmi Note 10 has a fingerprint sensor integrated into the power button on the side

The Redmi Note 10 has stereo speakers. There are extra speaker holes on the top, though it appears that Xiaomi is using the earpiece itself as a speaker, which is weaker than the main one on the bottom. There’s also the company’s trademark infrared emitter on the top for controlling appliances with. The tray on the left has slots for two Nano-SIMs and a microSD card. Thankfully, there’s a 3.5mm audio socket on the bottom next to the USB Type-C port.

The screen is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and an adhesive protective film is pre-applied. You also get a simple plastic case in the box. What’s most interesting is the IP53 rating for splash and dust resistance which is very uncommon at this price level.

Redmi Note 10 specifications and software

The processor of choice for this generation is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 678, a recently launched upper-mid-range option which improves very slightly on the Snapdragon 675. It has two Kryo 460 Gold CPU cores running at 2.2GHz (compared to 2GHz in its predecessor) and the same six Kryo 460 Silver cores running at 1.7Ghz for low-power situations. There’s either 4GB or 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and 64GB or 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage depending on which variant you choose.

The 6.43-inch display has a full-HD+ resolution and 60Hz refresh rate. Brightness goes up to 1100nits peak which is enough for apps like YouTube to display HDR videos with boosted brightness, although HDR isn’t listed on the spec sheet. You can adjust the colour tone or switch to Reading Mode which makes everything appear warmer, which Xiaomi says can reduce eye strain.

redmi note 10 bottom ndtv redmi note 10

The Redmi Note 10 has stereo speakers, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a Type-C port

The Redmi Note 10 has a 5000mAh battery. It can be charged at up to 33W, and a USB Type-C charger matching that rating is included. You also get dual-band Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth, dual simultaneous 4G, multiple navigation systems (though NavIC isn’t listed among them), and all the usual sensors. Xiaomi also touts the use of a Z-axis haptic motor which is said to allow for more subtle vibrations.

As of now, Redmi Note 10 units in the market will come running MIUI 12 based on Android 11. My unit had version 12.0.1 and didn’t get any security updates beyond the January 2021 security patch, which is okay but not ideal. The company does promise a huge update with MIUI 12.5 which is coming soon. It also says you can expect at least quarterly security updates for around three years and one or two major Android version updates, but that isn’t set in stone.

The biggest change coming with MIUI 12.5 will be the removal of all promotional content, advertising notifications, lockscreen ads, and bloatware. Xiaomi says it wants to give power to the users, and so nearly all apps will be removable – with the exception of the absolute essentials such as the dialler, camera, clock, and settings apps. It should be interesting to see how this plays out, but for now you’ll have to deal with all these annoyances. Some of the preloaded apps, such as Netflix, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zili, Mi Remote, Mi Credit, and Mi Store are already removable, but others including Mi Pay, Music, and ShareMe are not.

MIUI does have a lot of functionality that goes beyond stock Android, such as floating windows, a Game Turbo mode, plenty of home screen customisation options, optional gesture navigation, and iOS-like UI shortcuts. You don’t get all the features of the Remi Note 10 Pro and Pro Max, for instance, there’s no Second Space private profile, and there are fewer creative camera modes.

redmi note 10 rear ndtv redmi note 10

The Redmi Note 10 is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, the Redmi Note 9

Redmi Note 10 performance

Other than occasional notifications from some of the spammy apps, there isn’t much to complain about. The Redmi Note 10 has more than enough power to run everyday apps and tasks smoothly. It’s also relatively light and convenient to use. The fingerprint sensor is responsive but I found myself unlocking the phone unintentionally when just holding it in my hand, or picking it up to put it in my pocket, and I had to consciously teach myself to avoid touching the sensor.

The screen is bright and crisp, with rich colours. You can customise the tone but the reflective ring around the front camera is annoying at times. There’s an always-on display feature that isn’t active by default and doesn’t actually always stay on – you still have to tap the screen to see the time, battery status and notifications, so you might as well just use the tap-to-wake gesture. The Redmi Note 10 does have Widevine L1 DRM certification so you can stream at high resolution.

Games including Asphalt 9: Legends and Call of Duty Mobile ran pretty well at High graphics quality. There was very minor stuttering and the rear of the phone did get slightly warm after about 15 minutes. Performance in graphics benchmarks was also decent for a budget phone. I got scores of 484 and 1,487 in 3DMark’s Wild Life and Sling Shot Extreme tests, while GFXBench’s T-Rex and Manhattan 3.1 scenes ran at 42fps and 15fps respectively. As for general performance benchmarks, AnTuTu managed a score of 245,114 while Geekbench’s single- and multi-core scores were 543 and 1,641 respectively.

Battery life is good overall, and you should be able to get through at least one full day without having to reach for the charger. I wasn’t disappointed even with my usage, which involved streaming one full movie and some music, a lot of Wi-Fi web browsing, and some use of the cameras. Our HD video loop test lasted for a reasonable 15 hours, 12 minutes. Charging the Redmi Note 10 with its own charger, it got up to 66 percent in 30 minutes and 91 percent in an hour, which isn’t bad at all.

redmi note 10 camera ndtv redmi note 10

You get four cameras in an elaborately designed module on the rear

Redmi Note 10 cameras

Unlike the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max with its 108-megapixel primary camera, there’s nothing unusual or pathbreaking about the Redmi Note 10’s photography capabilities. You get a very standard 48-megapixel f/1.79 main rear camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and the very basic 2-megapixel macro and depth sensors which companies use to fulfil that “quad camera” marketing requirement on budget phones.

The Redmi Note 10 also lacks many of the software touches that its more expensive siblings offer. The vlog, dual exposure, clone, and dual video modes are missing, potentially due to the more modest processor, but this is still surprising. You can record 4K 30fps video, and slow-motion capture goes up to 960fps at 720p.

Redmi Note 10 daytime camera samples (top: standard; bottom: ultra-wide) (tap to see full size)

Daytime camera performance is fairly good, with adequate sharpness and detail. Colours pop a little and exposures are generally fine. Landscape shots are okay, but distant objects can be somewhat blotchy. Close-ups tended to be crisp and detailed as long as the subjects weren’t brightly coloured – but some red flowers, for instance, looked dramatically oversaturated and indistinct. Portrait mode usually did a good job of gently blurring the background to emphasise the subject, and portrait shots looked noticeably better in terms of composition than close-ups taken in the standard mode, though some overall detail is lost. Quality is weaker with the wide-angle camera, of course, but it could be useful sometimes since edge distortion is not too jarring. The macro camera, as expected, is only really suitable for novelty shots and doesn’t produce great quality results that you’d want to rely on.

Redmi Note 10 daytime camera samples (tap to see full size)

As for low-light shots, you might want to tap the shutter button a few times for a better chance that your subject will be captured crisply. While the Redmi Note 10 usually gets it right, there were cases in my testing that were disappointingly blurred or out of focus. If there’s enough artificial light around, objects will look good enough and colours will show up decently well. Night mode can boost brightness and balance exposures nicely, but results depend heavily on ambient light and shot composition. The ultra-wide camera delivers quite poor results at night.

Redmi Note 10 low-light camera sample (tap to see full size)

Redmi Note 10 low-light camera samples (top: standard; bottom: night mode) (tap to see full size)

Selfies looked ok, but skin textures and details are weak when seen at full magnification. Beautification is on by default. The selfie portrait mode works well enough and separated the background accurately.

Video recorded in the daytime is relatively smooth. At 4K, colours tend to get overblown and there’s an unnaturally warm tone. Even the wide-angle camera does okay, though detail is less crisp. At night, the lack of stabilisation is evident if you’re moving around while recording, but detail even in moving objects is decent if you stand still. 4K video still looks way too warm and there’s noticeable jitter when moving. The wide-angle camera produced wobbly footage which was much darker and murkier in terms of detail.

Redmi Note 10 front camera sample

Redmi Note 10 macro camera sample

Verdict

The Redmi Note 10 doesn’t push any major new boundaries for a budget phone, which is a little disappointing considering how popular its predecessors have been. That said, prices are rising and taxes are steeper than before so it’s hard for companies to pull off huge surprises these days while keeping costs low. This is still a very competent phone and offers good value for money in 2021.

It offers a striking new design, solid performance for everyday tasks, good battery life, and a competent enough main rear camera. Little touches such as the AMOLED display, stereo speakers and the IP53 rating are what set the Redmi Note 10 apart from other budget phones. The promise of clean, annoyance-free software is tantalising, but we have to rate this phone based on our actual experience with it at the time of review. As of now, that means the spam and ads cost it a few points, but if you’re reading this after the rollout of MIUI 12.5, do take that into account.

The Redmi Note 10 will compete with the Poco M3 (Review), Moto G10 Power and G30, Samsung Galaxy M12, and even the Redmi 9 Power (Review), plus many other recent launches in the sub-Rs. 15,000 space. This isn’t an exciting phone but it should prove to be quite popular in its segment.

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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