Xiaomi Debuts Redmi Y1 Selfie-Centric Smartphone in India

Xiaomi is adding yet another smartphone series to its lineup in India with the launch of Redmi Y1 (Y stands for the Younger You, apparently). As teased by the company’s VP a few days ago, the new phone comes with a beefed-up front camera setup at an affordable price tag. Interestingly, the Redmi Y1’s hardware and design largely resemble that of the Redmi Note 5A Prime which was leaked a few weeks ago.

The Xiaomi Redmi Y1 inherits design and build from its siblings as it flaunts the usual aluminum clamshell aesthetic. However, the corners are now a bit more curved. There’s a 5.5-inch HD display up front which is protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass (variant not revealed yet). It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor, Adreno 505 GPU, 3GB of RAM, 32GB internal storage which is expandable and a 3080mAh non-removable battery.

On the rear, you’ll find a 13-megapixel sensor as well as a circular fingerprint reader. The front camera arrangement includes a 16-megapixel lens coupled with a soft LED flash. Xiaomi says they’ve updated the Beautify feature for improving your portraits without compromising much of the original facial details. The Redmi Y1 also supports dual-SIM and sports a dedicated MicroSD card slot. It runs on the company latest MIUI9 software.

While the Redmi Y1 doesn’t bring anything new to the already crowded smartphone table, it will certainly allow the booming OEM to establish a contender against the selfie-centric likes of Oppo and Vivo. Even if Xiaomi manages to lure in just a fraction of those customers, it will be soon able to outpace Samsung and become the leading manufacturer in the second biggest smartphone market.

The Xiaomi Redmi Y1 will be available in two color options — Gold and Dark Grey. It’s priced at Rs 8,999 for the 3+32GB variant and Rs 10,999 for 4+64GB. The Y1 will be exclusively available on Amazon starting from 8th of November. You can also purchase it from Xiaomi’s offline partners.

Xiaomi also launched a much cheaper and less powerful — Redmi Y1 Lite along with this. You can read all about it here.