The Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is a powerful and feature-packed smartphone that offers an excellent value for its price. However, it also has some drawbacks that may affect its overall performance.

One of the key areas where the Redmi Note 2 excels is in its processing package. The phone is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor, which provides fast and efficient performance. This is paired with up to 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, making it well-suited for gaming, multitasking, and heavy usage.

The Redmi Note 2 also features a 13-megapixel camera with phase detection autofocus, which provides fast and accurate focusing. However, the actual performance of the camera is just average, lacking in detail and sharpness. The phone's software experience is also very good, thanks to Xiaomi's MIUI interface. This offers a range of features, including quick settings, customizable notifications, and a powerful theme store.

One area where the Redmi Note 2 falls short is in its battery life. In our testing, we found that the phone struggled to last more than 4 hours and 15 minutes on a single charge, despite having a large 3600mAh battery. This may be due to the high usage by the display, which consumes a significant amount of power.

Another drawback of the Redmi Note 2 is its lack of availability in some countries. While it's available in China, it's not yet available globally, and potential buyers may need to import a Chinese model or wait for a global release.

The phone's design is also worth noting. The Redmi Note 2 has a sleek and durable build quality, with a metal frame and Gorilla Glass on the front. However, some users may find the phone's speaker quality to be lacking.

In terms of pricing, the Redmi Note 2 is very competitive. The base model costs around $140, while the prime model costs around $156. This makes it an excellent value for its price, especially considering its powerful processing package and good software experience.

Overall, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is a solid choice for anyone looking for a feature-packed smartphone at an affordable price. While it may have some drawbacks, such as battery life and camera performance, it's well worth considering for those who want a great value for their money.

One thing to note is that the phone does come with some Chinese bloatware, which may be a drawback for some users. Additionally, Google Play services are not available on the Chinese model, although this should be addressed with a global release.

For now, potential buyers can purchase the Redmi Note 2 in China or wait for its global release, which is expected to offer Google Play services and potentially other improvements. The phone will be available in various colors, including white, black, yellow, blue, and pink, and will come with either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage.

In summary, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is a great option for those looking for a powerful smartphone at an affordable price. While it has some drawbacks, such as battery life and camera performance, its good software experience, durable build quality, and competitive pricing make it well worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ena little over a year ago xiaomi released the original redmi note fast forward to today and the market has changed dramatically with much more competition in the sub $200 price category so does the just released second iteration redmi Note 2 live up to the high standard set by its predecessor this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my full review of the xiaomi redmi Note 2 the redm Note 2 takes the size of the original redm note but applies many of the design elements found on the mi4i it might even be fair to call the redm Note 2 a blown up version of the mi4i as the two are strikingly similar in both how they look and how they feel in the hand but make no mistake there are many differences between the two devices while the redmi Note 2 does retain the same matte soft touch plastic rear it ditches the unibody aspect and offers access to the battery micro SD card slot and dual micro Sim slots something that has been standard on all redmi devices other key differences include a once again Center Justified camera red capacitive keys and the subtle move of regulatory information from the back cupboard to beneath the battery oh and there's also an IR blaster something that was absent on both the mi4i as well as the original redmi note in terms of size the redmi Note 2 is lighter thinner and even a bit smaller than its predecessor while the power and volume buttons are both more responsive than they are on the red note they do feel a Ted mushy compared to the mi4 eyes buttons the red capacitive Keys recent apps home and back are each illuminated in addition to that there's also a notification LED to the left of the 5 megapixel front-facing camera as you may have guessed the redmi Note 2 keeps the same 5.5 in screen size as the original redmi note but what changes is the resolution from 720p to 1080p that's a pretty substantial upgrade and while the display does look pretty Sharp with excellent viewing angles the contrast and vividness aren't quite up to par with the mi4i nor similarly priced devices like the mesu M2 note that's not to say that it's a bad display by any means it's actually quite good but it's just not the best out there perhaps the most significant upgrade from the original redmi note is in performance this time xiaomi has included an octacore mediatech Helio X10 collected either 2 GHz in the base model or 2.2 GHz in the prime model a quick and tutu test on our base model reveals High marks and processor related categories the same areas where the original redmi note fell behind day-to-day performance was also very good and this is actually the first redmi device that I've used that runs MIUI without leg xiaomi claims that their upcoming miui7 update will improve UI performance by up to 30% while there is 2 GB of RAM do keep in mind that Mii is a fairly memory hungry skin so you'll only be left with about about 1 GB on boot gaming performance on the redmi Note 2 was about average for the price with the power VR g6200 I did notice some lag in games like Asphalt 8 even on medium settings which is a tad disappointing I also noticed that the phone tended to heat up while playing games but the heat never made the phone uncomfortable to hold the redmi Note 2 includes support for 80211 AC Wi-Fi GPS and Bluetooth 4.0 although the phone does include support for dual SIM 4 G LTE carrier support is completely dependent upon the variant I was able to receive HSPA plus over AT&T's us network with a Chinese model But be sure to check the phone's frequency list before making a purchase the IR blaster on the top right of the device functions just as expected although the stock Mi remote app doesn't seem to support Vio TVs luckily you can download a third party app to gain support for many more manufacturers overall it's a really nice addition especially considering during the phone's price the speaker on the back of the redmi Note 2 sounds very good with adequate volume for most environments I would say that it's slightly less distorted than the already good mi4i speaker with the only drawback being that it's rear-facing but for less than $200 it's one of the best speakers that you'll find unfortunately battery life on the redmi Note 2 was not as good as I had expected in my testing with Wi-Fi on for about 70% of the day and screen brightness set to Auto the phone was never able to exceed 4 hours of screen on time I started each day at 6:30 a.m. and was able to get an average of about 3 and 1/2 hours when using the phone for 12 hours or less however when I toned down my usage so that I could use the phone for about 15 hours I was only able to get about 2 hours and 15 minutes of screen on time compared to the mesu M2 note which achieved 4 hours and 15 minutes of screen on time with 14 hours of usage the redmi Note 2 does seem to be lacking in longevity there does appear to be some significant battery drain during phone idle and I'm speculating that this combined with the high usage by the display is what's killing the 360 milliamp user replaceable battery it's still too early to tell whether this issue affects the Chinese model exclusively but I'm hoping that xiaomi can resolve these battery issues before releasing the Global variant the xiaomi redmi Note 2 includes a 13 megap Samsung camera with phase detection autofocus and while the autofocus is very fast actual performance is just about average with a noticeable lack of detail and sharpness the camera is still a step up from the original redmi note but it's really nothing too impressive xiaomi's standard camera app offers quick and easy controls as well as many different camera modes there's also a manual mode for adjusting white balance and ISO but I never felt the need to use it the redmi Note 2 is shipping with Mii 6 over Android 5.0.2 lollipop with the promise of a MIUI 7 update very soon MIUI has a lot of positives but here's just a quick list of things that I really like about the experience you can reorganize the quick tackles adjust the brightness with auto brightness on and even customize what show up in the status bar there's also options to change the display color temperature or contrast a very powerful built-in theme store shami's misound enhancer for headphones which even lets you assign headphone buttons and options to change capacitive key functions xiaomi's backup app lets you backup apps with app data as well as launcher layouts settings and accounts automatically without root and if you're feeling adventurous you can flesh a slightly less stable developer ROM to get weekly updates to MIUI perhaps the best aspect of MIUI is xiaomi's attention to detail throughout the animations are fluid and the system apps all follow a beautiful design language of course Mii also has its drawbacks you can't dismiss notifications from the lock screen nor access an app other than the camera the launcher doesn't include an app drawer and memory management is still relatively poor the biggest drawback right now however is that you can't download a global ROM with Google Services I'm confident that we'll see a release alongside the global phone release but for now you're stuck with a Chinese ROM if you pick up the Chinese variant there's a lot of Chinese bloatware and noticeable absence of Google Play services unfortunately xiaomi also removed the easyto use Google Installer app from their App Store making it significantly more difficult to install Google Apps the only current workaround is to flash a custom recovery and then flash a GFS package which works but isn't an ideal solution for obvious reasons the good news is that it's only a matter of time before xiaomi releases a global ROM for Chinese variant owners to flash it's also important to note that if you purchase the device officially instead of importing it you won't have to worry about this as your device will include Google Play services out of the box you can purchase an FDD LTE equipped xiaomi redmi Note 2 in China for 900 Redman B for the base model or 1,000 Redman for the prime model or $140 and $156 respectively a global addition of this phone will be launching in various International markets very soon which will include Google Play services and cost less than having to import a Chinese variant you can also purchase this phone in either white black yellow blue or pink the base model will include 16 GB of internal storage while the prime model will include 32 GB you can expand the storage however with a Micro SD card up to 32 GB the xiaomi redmi Note 2 is an excellent phone for the price with a very nice design powerful processing package and a great software experience unfortunately its disappointing battery life average camera performance and lack of us availability may be enough to turn potential buyers towards other options if you can live with those flaws and want the very best performance and a great software experience from a Chinese OEM then the redmi Note 2 is likely the best option for you however if you'd rather have a nicer display and better battery life and are willing to sacrifice on performance and speaker quality the mesu M2 note is definitely an option worth checking out thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you enjoyed it also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Androida little over a year ago xiaomi released the original redmi note fast forward to today and the market has changed dramatically with much more competition in the sub $200 price category so does the just released second iteration redmi Note 2 live up to the high standard set by its predecessor this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my full review of the xiaomi redmi Note 2 the redm Note 2 takes the size of the original redm note but applies many of the design elements found on the mi4i it might even be fair to call the redm Note 2 a blown up version of the mi4i as the two are strikingly similar in both how they look and how they feel in the hand but make no mistake there are many differences between the two devices while the redmi Note 2 does retain the same matte soft touch plastic rear it ditches the unibody aspect and offers access to the battery micro SD card slot and dual micro Sim slots something that has been standard on all redmi devices other key differences include a once again Center Justified camera red capacitive keys and the subtle move of regulatory information from the back cupboard to beneath the battery oh and there's also an IR blaster something that was absent on both the mi4i as well as the original redmi note in terms of size the redmi Note 2 is lighter thinner and even a bit smaller than its predecessor while the power and volume buttons are both more responsive than they are on the red note they do feel a Ted mushy compared to the mi4 eyes buttons the red capacitive Keys recent apps home and back are each illuminated in addition to that there's also a notification LED to the left of the 5 megapixel front-facing camera as you may have guessed the redmi Note 2 keeps the same 5.5 in screen size as the original redmi note but what changes is the resolution from 720p to 1080p that's a pretty substantial upgrade and while the display does look pretty Sharp with excellent viewing angles the contrast and vividness aren't quite up to par with the mi4i nor similarly priced devices like the mesu M2 note that's not to say that it's a bad display by any means it's actually quite good but it's just not the best out there perhaps the most significant upgrade from the original redmi note is in performance this time xiaomi has included an octacore mediatech Helio X10 collected either 2 GHz in the base model or 2.2 GHz in the prime model a quick and tutu test on our base model reveals High marks and processor related categories the same areas where the original redmi note fell behind day-to-day performance was also very good and this is actually the first redmi device that I've used that runs MIUI without leg xiaomi claims that their upcoming miui7 update will improve UI performance by up to 30% while there is 2 GB of RAM do keep in mind that Mii is a fairly memory hungry skin so you'll only be left with about about 1 GB on boot gaming performance on the redmi Note 2 was about average for the price with the power VR g6200 I did notice some lag in games like Asphalt 8 even on medium settings which is a tad disappointing I also noticed that the phone tended to heat up while playing games but the heat never made the phone uncomfortable to hold the redmi Note 2 includes support for 80211 AC Wi-Fi GPS and Bluetooth 4.0 although the phone does include support for dual SIM 4 G LTE carrier support is completely dependent upon the variant I was able to receive HSPA plus over AT&T's us network with a Chinese model But be sure to check the phone's frequency list before making a purchase the IR blaster on the top right of the device functions just as expected although the stock Mi remote app doesn't seem to support Vio TVs luckily you can download a third party app to gain support for many more manufacturers overall it's a really nice addition especially considering during the phone's price the speaker on the back of the redmi Note 2 sounds very good with adequate volume for most environments I would say that it's slightly less distorted than the already good mi4i speaker with the only drawback being that it's rear-facing but for less than $200 it's one of the best speakers that you'll find unfortunately battery life on the redmi Note 2 was not as good as I had expected in my testing with Wi-Fi on for about 70% of the day and screen brightness set to Auto the phone was never able to exceed 4 hours of screen on time I started each day at 6:30 a.m. and was able to get an average of about 3 and 1/2 hours when using the phone for 12 hours or less however when I toned down my usage so that I could use the phone for about 15 hours I was only able to get about 2 hours and 15 minutes of screen on time compared to the mesu M2 note which achieved 4 hours and 15 minutes of screen on time with 14 hours of usage the redmi Note 2 does seem to be lacking in longevity there does appear to be some significant battery drain during phone idle and I'm speculating that this combined with the high usage by the display is what's killing the 360 milliamp user replaceable battery it's still too early to tell whether this issue affects the Chinese model exclusively but I'm hoping that xiaomi can resolve these battery issues before releasing the Global variant the xiaomi redmi Note 2 includes a 13 megap Samsung camera with phase detection autofocus and while the autofocus is very fast actual performance is just about average with a noticeable lack of detail and sharpness the camera is still a step up from the original redmi note but it's really nothing too impressive xiaomi's standard camera app offers quick and easy controls as well as many different camera modes there's also a manual mode for adjusting white balance and ISO but I never felt the need to use it the redmi Note 2 is shipping with Mii 6 over Android 5.0.2 lollipop with the promise of a MIUI 7 update very soon MIUI has a lot of positives but here's just a quick list of things that I really like about the experience you can reorganize the quick tackles adjust the brightness with auto brightness on and even customize what show up in the status bar there's also options to change the display color temperature or contrast a very powerful built-in theme store shami's misound enhancer for headphones which even lets you assign headphone buttons and options to change capacitive key functions xiaomi's backup app lets you backup apps with app data as well as launcher layouts settings and accounts automatically without root and if you're feeling adventurous you can flesh a slightly less stable developer ROM to get weekly updates to MIUI perhaps the best aspect of MIUI is xiaomi's attention to detail throughout the animations are fluid and the system apps all follow a beautiful design language of course Mii also has its drawbacks you can't dismiss notifications from the lock screen nor access an app other than the camera the launcher doesn't include an app drawer and memory management is still relatively poor the biggest drawback right now however is that you can't download a global ROM with Google Services I'm confident that we'll see a release alongside the global phone release but for now you're stuck with a Chinese ROM if you pick up the Chinese variant there's a lot of Chinese bloatware and noticeable absence of Google Play services unfortunately xiaomi also removed the easyto use Google Installer app from their App Store making it significantly more difficult to install Google Apps the only current workaround is to flash a custom recovery and then flash a GFS package which works but isn't an ideal solution for obvious reasons the good news is that it's only a matter of time before xiaomi releases a global ROM for Chinese variant owners to flash it's also important to note that if you purchase the device officially instead of importing it you won't have to worry about this as your device will include Google Play services out of the box you can purchase an FDD LTE equipped xiaomi redmi Note 2 in China for 900 Redman B for the base model or 1,000 Redman for the prime model or $140 and $156 respectively a global addition of this phone will be launching in various International markets very soon which will include Google Play services and cost less than having to import a Chinese variant you can also purchase this phone in either white black yellow blue or pink the base model will include 16 GB of internal storage while the prime model will include 32 GB you can expand the storage however with a Micro SD card up to 32 GB the xiaomi redmi Note 2 is an excellent phone for the price with a very nice design powerful processing package and a great software experience unfortunately its disappointing battery life average camera performance and lack of us availability may be enough to turn potential buyers towards other options if you can live with those flaws and want the very best performance and a great software experience from a Chinese OEM then the redmi Note 2 is likely the best option for you however if you'd rather have a nicer display and better battery life and are willing to sacrifice on performance and speaker quality the mesu M2 note is definitely an option worth checking out thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you enjoyed it also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Android\n"