We test many flagship smartphones here at FossBytes, but most will never buy one. In developing economies like India, buying the first 5G smartphone is one of the most important steps towards a connected future. Now, to cater to these individuals, Redmi has just released the most affordable 5G smartphone, the Redmi A4 5G, for just INR 8,499.

In this review, I will help you decide whether the Redmi A4 5G is worth buying or if its shortcomings make it a non-compelling option. Let’s get started.

Redmi A4 5G Review: Design & Hardware

When I first unboxed the Redmi A4 5G, the first thing that struck me was how big it was. The phone houses a 6.88-inch display, and coupled with the large bezels, it’s one of the largest devices I’ve ever tested. On the flip side, I absolutely love the back design. The black variant looked fantastic yet classy, and the sparkly bits in the finish made it resemble a starry night sky. However, the device also comes in a purple variant.

If you have been following the latest flagship releases, like the OPPO Find X8, you would have noticed the trend of a circular camera module. Surprisingly, the Redmi A4 5G also has the same circular design, which makes the phone look much more premium.

Although the sides are undoubtedly plastic, they do a solid job of protecting the device from regular everyday use and accidental drops. Also, despite the price, Redmi managed to pack a side fingerprint scanner, which worked just fine to unlock the phone. Plus, the A4 includes a 3.5mm headphone jack. This is a nice touch, especially for users who might not yet own Bluetooth headphones.

Redmi A4 5G Review: Display

The Redmi A4 5G houses a massive 6.88-inch HD+ 120Hz LCD. And for the price, it looks pretty good. Sure, the panel doesn’t have the highest resolution, but it’s more than acceptable at this price point. With a peak brightness of 600 nits, I had no issues using the phone indoors or under artificial lighting, and the colors appeared vibrant and well-saturated.

While the outdoor visibility was less than ideal, the display will serve you well if you plan to use this phone mostly for studying or watching educational content. However, it’s important to note that Redmi hasn’t specified what display protection they’re using, but during my testing, the device didn’t suffer any major scratches.

Redmi A4 5G Review: Performance

Performance makes or breaks a budget smartphone, and thankfully, it is solid on the Redmi A4 5G. But before we proceed, the device houses the all-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chipset featuring two Cortez-A78 cores running at 2 GHz and six Cortex-A55 cores running at 1.8 GHz, along with an Adreno GPU. Additionally, my review unit came with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage.

Thanks to the 120Hz display, the performance in day-to-day use is pretty good. The 4s Gen 2 handles opening and closing smoothly, and HyperOS’s animations add a nice touch. However, just note that you will occasionally see stutters when opening heavy applications such as the camera or scrolling through YouTube. Still, for the price, this performance is amazing.

Benchmarks & Gaming

Moving over to benchmarks, the 4s Gen 2 performed solidly here as well. In AnTuTu, the Redmi A4 5g scored 396310 points. On the other hand, in Geekbench, the device scored 832 in the single-core and 1837 in the multi-core test. Finally, in the infamous 30-minute 30-thread throttle test, the phone throttled to 87% of its peak performance.

I also tested the Redmi A4’s gaming capabilities with titles like BGMI and CODM. The experience was fine. In BGMI, the gameplay was smooth for the most part, with occasional lag at the “Smooth” and “Ultra” settings.

Finally, it is important to note that the Redmi A4 5G doesn’t support NSA (non-standalone) 5G bands used by carriers like Airtel. If you plan to buy this device, make sure you have a Jio or Vodafone Idea SIM to use 5G connectivity.

Battery Life & Charging

With a massive 5,180mAh cell, I had high expectations from the Redmi A4, and it did not disappoint. On a full charge, the device easily lasted a full day of heavy usage, consisting of scrolling Instagram, watching YouTube videos, taking camera samples, and playing games.

Regarding charging, the Redmi A4 5G supports 18W of fast charging, and the included charger charged the battery from 20% to 80% in just over an hour.

Redmi A4 5G Review: Cameras

It’s no secret that cameras aren’t the biggest priority when making a budget phone. The same can be said for the Redmi A4, which houses a 50MP primary camera, a depth sensor, and a 5MP selfie shooter.

While the specs don’t sound exciting, the photos aren’t that bad. If you give the sensor enough light, it delivers some good results, with cool colors, ample HDR, and decent sharpness. Portraits also looked pretty acceptable in daylight. The shots had decent edge detection, natural skin tones, and a good shallow depth of field.

Nighttime photography, however, is a whole different story. Despite the 50MP sensor, the shots were muddy, with low sharpness, washed-out colors, and noise present in every shot.

On the other hand, the selfies from the Redmi A4 5G looked good in daylight, with pleasing skin tones. However, due to the 5MP sensor, the sharpness was missing.

Redmi A4 5G Review: Software

The Redmi A4 5G comes with HyperOS, which runs on top of Android 14. However, to make the experience smoother, Redmi has trimmed down the OS and used some old bits from MIUI, such as the notification center. And although there are over 50 pre-installed apps, you can, thankfully, uninstall most of them.

Finally, Redmi has promised two years of software updates and four years of security patches. This is amazing in the budget segment, where most brands don’t even give one update.

Should you buy the Redmi A4 5G?

The Redmi A4 5G is the most phone you can get at just INR 8,499. It supports the latest 5G connectivity, features a large display, and delivers solid performance for its price. There’s not much more you could ask for in this budget range. So, if you want to buy a phone for your kids or a secondary device for yourself, the Redmi A4 5G is a solid option and gets a big thumbs up from me. You can check it out on Xiaomi’s website and Amazon.