What Nokia used to be in much of Europe in the mid-2000s, Xiaomi has been established in the last 7 years. The majority of that success has indeed been built on the Redmi line of low-cost smartphones, which has frequently delivered excellent and cutting-edge hardware specs, as well as its primitive yet functional Mi UI, which was subsidized by advertisements. After releasing the excellent Redmi Note 10 line of phones, Xiaomi decided to release another one dubbed the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S, which sits between the Redmi Note 10 and Redmi Note 10 Pro. It’s an odd phone from Xiaomi that adds to the company’s portfolio, but it has a gaming focus that might appeal to Call of Duty: Cell and PUBG fans.
What will you see here?
Design & Build
The Redmi Note 10S follows the same design language as the Redmi Note 10 series, which was released earlier this year. It has a very normal appearance, but it has this lovely blue gradient color and a matte feel that makes it comfortable to hold in the hand.
It’s also not a smudge magnet, and it has IP53 water and dust protection, much like other Xiaomi phones. It even has a 3.5mm headphone socket and an IR blaster, which is a defining feature of Xiaomi phones. The camera array is housed on the phone’s back, which offers a bit of a bump but also a charming appearance reminiscent of a vintage camera. This hump, on the other hand, guarantees that the smartphone never sits flat on the table. There are also stereo loudspeakers that are rather loud but lack clarity yet should suffice for someone on the run.
It is lighter than the Redmi Note 10 Pro at 178g, but it is significantly thicker at 8.3mm. By current standards, it is still a very simple phone to carry, albeit the 6.43-inch screen size is definitely huge. It also makes it incredibly easy to unlock the phone – it is quick and highly effective.
Overall, it’s a well-designed phone with a distinct color that’s not too unlike its Redmi relatives from 2021. Also, it helps that the phone’s build quality is excellent for the price.
Display:
Xiaomi’s Redmi phones have always had excellent screens, and the Redmi Note 10S is no exception. However, it lacks the smoothness provided by the 120Hz refresh rate found in its siblings. As a compromise, it doesn’t even feature 90Hz like the Note 10 5G.
It’s a little surprising given the MediaTek chip’s gaming credentials, but it does offer vibrant and vivid colors and nice viewing angles. Also adequate levels of luminance. It has a peak brightness of 1100 nits. This is sufficient even in bright outside situations, and it is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
It’s a good screen for viewing Netflix videos or reading text. In general, it delivers, albeit given that you can obtain a Redmi Note 10 Pro with such a high refresh rate display. Here is where things get a bit confusing. Undeniably, the “pro” model has a superior panel.
It, like the other Redmi Note 10 series phones, lacks HDR10 capability, which reduces its content consumption capabilities slightly. However, it looks fantastic—you’re primarily staring at all the displays with almost any bezel. But there is some on the phone’s lip. The hole punch camera is in the upper left corner and is just a glorified dot, so it doesn’t get in the way.
Performance:
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Redmi Note 10S is that it is powered by the same MediaTek Helio G95 chipset seen in the Redmi Note 8 Pro. It is a 12nm CPU with an octa-core architecture and a Mali G76 MC4 graphics processing unit (GPU), as well as 6GB RAM and up to 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage with a microSD card memory extension capability.
This is an intriguing specification considering that Xiaomi has utilized Qualcomm Snapdragon chips in the majority of its prior models. MediaTek has made a big fuss about this chip’s gaming capabilities.
Day-to-day performance was fluid, and it handled multitasking admirably. Even with 20 apps open at all times and while continually flipping between tabs in Chrome, multitasking was a snap. Even while gaming, such as Call of Duty Mobile.
The benchmark scores were also pretty good, albeit GFXBench did not run. Geekbench scores for the solitary benchmark averaged around 500, with it reaching 500 twice and remaining stuck at 499 the first time I tried it. The lowest score in the inter result was 1625.
Cameras:
Xiaomi will tell you it has a quad-camera system. But in reality, this is a dual-camera phone that is very ordinary and does not compete with the Redmi Note 10 Pro. It is officially equipped with a 64Mp main camera, an 8Mp ultra-wide sensor, and twin 2Mp macro and level sensors. A 13MP front-facing camera is hidden in the screen’s hole punch.
The main 64Mp camera performs admirably when taking close-up photos or portrait shots. However, while taking broad landscape shots, the image quality degrades significantly due to a loss of information. The photographs are a little saturated, which is a typical Xiaomi quality, but what irritates me is the over-sharpening.
Portrait photos are the highlight of this phone since they have superb edge recognition when given adequate lighting. The 10S’s strong point is not low-light photography. Even in night mode, images are blurry. Also, you need an extremely steady hand to capture something decent because there is no OIS.
When given inadequate illumination, the low-resolution macro camera can occasionally produce a decent photo. The ultra-wide lens is useful for landscape photography. However, it should not be utilized in low-light conditions. The front-facing camera is adequate for photos and Instagram stories, but it isn’t going to blow anybody away.
Battery Life of Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S
When given inadequate illumination, the low-resolution macro camera can occasionally produce a decent photo. The ultra-wide lens is useful for landscape photography, however, it should not be utilized in low-light conditions. It’s hit or miss, and the poor res of 8Mp doesn’t help it obtain a lot more detail.
The front-facing camera is adequate for photos and Instagram stories, but it isn’t going to blow anybody away. You played several games to test the phone, made Zoom video calls, browsed the web, and took a lot of images with its quad-camera array. Also spent a lot of time on Twitter and Instagram. In addition to making phone conversations, you can utilize picture editing tools such as VSCO and Snapseed. As well as SimpleNote, Google Docs, and Gmail. in order to consume materials.
This is a real one-day battery life phone, but if your usage is lighter than mine, you may theoretically extend the battery life of this handset to two days on a single charge. This is astounding but anticipated given the Redmi Note Series’ reputation.
Even with a 33W fast charger, charging the phone took some time because its massive battery takes some time to fully charge. This would take over an hour for the phone to get from 0% to 100%.
Software:
The Redmi Note 10S was the first phone released by Xiaomi with MiUI 12.5 based on Android 11.
It is a significant improvement over MiUI 11 since it is now getting closer to pure Android. Although numerous Xiaomi customizations remain. The UI itself is fairly smooth, although it becomes rather muddled due to the plethora of pre-loaded applications and bloatware. As well as the reality that Xiaomi shoots uninvited advertisements inside the interface.
The notification and lock screens, in particular. Renowned for sliding in advertising, which is annoying even on a regular basis.
Price:
The Redmi Note 10S has been released in the United Kingdom and is now available on
It joins other devices in the Redmi Note 10 series, such as the Redmi Note 10 Pro. The 6/64GB model costs £159, while the 6/128GB variant costs £229 pounds or $278 in the US. The entry-level 64GB model is not available in the United States.
Conclusion
This is the first Redmi Note phone that is adequate. There are other wonderful Redmi Note 10 models which can give you all this phone can do in a somewhat more competent package. Thus, one has to wonder why it exists. That so, it has its own set of advantages: its battery life is unquestionably greater than that of its other Redmi Note 10 siblings, and its new blue color is highly appealing.
However, at this price point, it just barely makes the cut, since investing a little more would get you a superior screen and camera combo in a knockout package from Xiaomi.
