Xiaomi reportedly
working on 4G LTE smartphone, cheaper than RedMi 1S
Image: GizChina
Xiaomi is expected to
come out with its most affordable smartphone yet, and it is said to be a 4G LTE
handset according to GizChina. According
to the site, the phone will be priced at 399 Yuan, which translated to around
Rs 4,020. That makes it cheaper than even the RedMi
1S.
The new phone will be
powered by Leadcore LC1860 SoC which is built around a 28nm Cortex A7
architecture running at 2GHz along with an ARM Mali T628MP2 GPU and
dual-channel 1GB LPDDR3 RAM.
We had read about
Xiaomi planning to invest in a 4G
chip making company. Leadcore Technology, the maker of the LC1860 SoC,
is in a joint venture with Xiaomi which may have helped Xiaomi to price its 4G
smartphone at such rates. The Leadcore chipset comes with an integrated modem
to support GSM, EDGE, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA. LTE-FDD and TD-LTE networks.
Other details revealed
include an HD display, although GizChina mentions ‘2K LCD’ as one of the specs.
It wouldn’t make sense for an ultra-affordable phone to sport 2K display. We
are assuming, the LC1860 SoC can support upto 2K display. It will most likely
come with Android 4.4.4 KitKat OS with the MIUI skin on top.
If indeed Xiaomi do
launch such a phone in India, at that price point, then that will surely lead
to another major upheaval in terms of 4G smartphones’ pricing.