A few days ago, I saw a young man at Delhi airport calling his father over video call. Happiness and tears were clearly visible in the father’s eyes as the young man promised to make it big in Delhi. All this was being done over a battered Redmi phone from a few years ago. Such stories keep coming up all the time, yet there are moments when we dismiss launches of inexpensive phones because they often don’t have flagship-grade features.

There is a need to realise that many save a few thousand bucks over months and years to buy a smartphone, which they hope would work for at least three years. The same kind of responsibility is on the new Redmi A4 5G. It’s not a phone with fancy features, like NFC pay, but this can well be the device lakhs of people in India would consider while moving from feature phones to 5G smartphones.

Bright display

In the box are all the usual stuff — a 33W charger (though the phone supports 18W fast-charging), cable and SIM card tray ejector. To keep costs under check, there is no smartphone protection case in the box.

There are no faults with the build. In the design department, the camera module on the rear panel is a stunner, given the pricing. There is a hybrid SIM slot tray with SD card option to expand storage up to 1TB. The fingerprint scanner has been incorporated in the power button and works fine. The cherry on top comes in the form of “Halo” glass sandwich design.

Coming to the display, users get a 6.88-inch HD+ IPS LCD display. Even though it’s a 720p display but the refresh rate you get is 120Hz. This is enough to offer colours that pop. Redmi has thrown in Widevine L1 certification, ensuring you can enjoy HD content on streaming services. On YouTube, it’s possible to watch 1080p content at 60fps. Brightness has been kept to 600 nits, which is just about okay for outside usage. There is a single down-firing speaker that gets quite loud and, at the same time, is clear.

Decent performance

Redmi is offering Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 processor and the review device has 4GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS2.2 storage. The read/write speed you will get is superior and though there is some CPU throttling, you will hardly be using this as a gaming device for high-end titles. In case you want to play a few games, turn down graphics settings to get a smooth experience.

Camera? On the back is a 50MP f/1.8 main camera, which is accompanied by a bokeh lens. On the front is a 5MP camera. The main camera can record videos at 1080@30fps, which is standard. You will get decent photos out of the main camera and videos too are acceptable though there is not much in form of stabilisation. The front camera can also shoot 1080@30fps videos. Photos have good dynamic range and the same goes for portrait shots.

Make the call

Running the show is Xiaomi HyperOS based on Android 14. Redmi is offering two years of Android updates and four years of security updates. But you have to deal with plenty of bloatware. We suggest you delete unwanted apps to get good performance. More impressive is the 5,160mAh battery that easily lasts a couple of days. Connectivity is quite good on a 5G network. Is it worth your time? Anybody looking to move from a feature phone to 5G, this is definitely a good option and for many it can be a helpful secondary device. If value for money is what you are looking for, Redmi A4 5G has you covered.

At a glance

• Device: Redmi A4 5G

• Price: Upwards of ₹8,499

High notes

• Excellent processor under 10K

• Good battery life

• Smooth 5G connectivity

• Decent camera performance

Muffled notes

• 33W charger is provided in the box but the phone charges at 18W

• Water-drop notch looks dated