Xiaomi Red Rice sequel includes octa-core chip, larger screen and a low price

Last year, Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi got many a heart fluttering by announcing a quad-core powered phone priced at the equivalent of $130 in China. Quickly dubbed the "Red Rice," the Xiaomi Hongmi handset became the poster child for low priced, value smartphones. Not surprisingly, the public ate it up. 100,000 units went in a heartbeat last year when the device was released for China Unicom's WCDMA pipeline. 8000 units were snatched up in 5 minutes on the company's website in Singapore on Thursday.

Now, Xiaomi has received TENAA certification (TENAA is China's version of the FCC) for its next-gen budget model. The red Android buttons on the front of the device identify this as belonging to the manufacturer's budget Redmi line. Sporting a 5.5 inch screen with 720 x 1280 resolution, there will be two different versions of this Xiaomi model. One will sport an octa-core 1.4GHz CPU, presumably made by MediaTek, while the other will be equipped with a faster 1.7GHz processor.

The device will also come equipped with a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP snapper on front. The TENAA filing mentioned something about an 8MP camera in front, so that is a possibility as well. Xiaomi has left the door ajar for competitors like Huawei, Coolpad and Hisense to push LTE powered, sub $130 phones. You see, this new Xiaomi model will have TD-SCDMA connectivity for China Mobile and WCDMA for other carriers in China, but so far a model with support for LTE has not been spotted. 

The next Xiaomi value phone won't officially be announced until the "MiFan Festival" next month. This is a celebration of the company's anniversary, a perfect time to unveil the sequel to the Red Rice.


source: StraitsTimes, TENAA via Zealer (translated), Engadget