Remember Xiaomi’s 399 yuan i.e. the $65 LTE enabled phone? There have been several leaks and speculations about the said device in the past, but today, we see that this phone has made it to TENAA again revealing its design and specifications. The $65 Xiaomi phone hit TENAA on 31 December 2014 with GSM / TD-SCDMA/ TD-LTE network support and dual SIM card dual standby support. While these network connectivity features are standard among mid-range devices, you don’t usually see them on a budget phone, let alone on a phone with just $65 price tag!
Design wise, the phone looks exactly like the recently announced Redmi 2 model. It features a square rear camera sensor with two small speaker grills on its right. The measurements too are in line with the new model. So, this could mean that Xiaomi may market this model as a variant to the Redmi 2 model. As for the tech specs, the $65 Xiaomi phone will come with a 4.7-inch 720p resolution display. It will be powered by a quad-core 1.6 GHz processor with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage. There will be an 8MP rear camera and a 2MP front shooter. It will run on Android 4.4.4 KitKat OS.
As you can see, the specs are almost the same as the current Redmi 2 model. There is only one major difference between the two. The Redmi 2 is powered by the 64-bit 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor while this model comes with the 1.6GHz quad-core Leadcore LC1860C processor. This budget processor is the reason why Xiaomi can sell the device for such a low price.
The LC1860C chipset is based on a 28nm manufacturing process on a quad-core Cortex-A7 architecture. It comes with the dual-core Mali T628 GPU and supports up to 13MP camera sensor, 720p display, 1080p recording at 30fps and TD-LTE/ LTE-FDD/ TF-SCDMA / WCDMA/ GSM/ EDGE networks.
The earlier Xiaomi leadcore model that hit TENAA with the Leadcore processor was clocked at 1.5GHz and had a different model number. So, this could be the final version that Xiaomi will release in the market.
Xiaomi’s partnership with Leadcore is not at all surprising as the company invested about $16.8 million in this Chinese based chipset manufacturer last year. This gave Xiaomi access to a number of intellectual property rights and since then, there have been numerous reports about a Leadcore based Redmi device to take over the budget market. Looks like this particular Redmi model is built to achieve this goal.
Overall, the design and tech specs of the device make it one of the best sub $70 smartphones in the market. The LTE connectivity at this price tag is definitely its USP. Anyways, we expect Xiaomi to officially reveal more details about the device soon. So stay tuned for more updates.
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