Hi guys so I'm backing out with the redmi note 5 this of course is the new
Chinese model with the revised camera on the back so it's got that wider aperture
if you've seen my unboxing which is basically like a hands-on review I'll
give you some photo samples of that so this video here just wanted to give you
a quick update that what's the phone like after 48 hours now I have been
using it and I just wanted to mention a couple of little things here so one of
the things that's really annoying with this phone of course being a Chinese
model that you don't have Google Play Store installed now I do have it here
and I can confirm that yes it's running fine now but it took me quite some time
to get this all set up and installed I will probably be releasing a backup file
that you can just restore on the phone so you've got Google Play Google Play
contact syncs and the account manager and things like that and the framework
because that I was having a lot of problems to get it working because
normally what you do if you go into the show me me store you just normally type
in Google now there is something there that actually will allow you to run
Google's Play Store but you must go through their application and it's
almost like a VPN probably the way that the Chinese circumvent Google of course
being blocked in China and that's really annoying to use so that was quite a bit
of a problem I had to start with now I've had a lot of questions in my first
hands-on I did make a couple of errors that yes it does support quick charge
I'll just show you that now and why I originally said that it didn't because I
was only getting figures of 5 volts 2 amps coming through the charger anyway
with my meter but if I plug in my Qualcomm quick charge 3 charger you see
it comes up with a little logo at the top I actually missed that in the video
someone pointed it out and said hey isn't that the Qualcomm quick charge
logo but I've noticed that it doesn't actually seem to charge it really that
much faster so I don't know whether it's Qualcomm
quick charge 3 that it's using or it could actually just be the Qualcomm
quick charge to speak it's really hard to tell my meters not reporting the
correct charge rates on it see this is the meter I have and it hovers around
while 2 amps when it's charging and about 6 volts it gets up too which is
kind of odd so it's not really reporting that information correctly charging
about 10 watts now I did charge it last night and I can confirm that the battery
capacity is close to the 4 thousand milliamp hours it reported something
like and 12 I think it was and for you pub G
fans out there yes it runs that this is on the medium sitting and it's not super
super super smooth but I've managed to play the game for quite some time three
hours in fact last night and I managed to get my winner winner chicken dinner
and the framerate is good enough that yes that you can play the game that
you'll be able to actually win like I did here and overall not too bad that's
on the medium if you're not happy with the framerate which I say hovers around
about 25 frames per second 30 at times and when really crowded areas that will
drop down then just set it on the low settings of course now when I was
playing the game I only lost about 25% battery life in three hours which is
really good and that means that yesterday I managed to get a screen on
time of 10 hours now this is continual screen on time I had it on most of the
time because I was gaming I was downloading apps and things and I was
also in Chrome and YouTube watching videos and at the moment I've been using
it today haven't made any voice calls today and I'm into one hour and a half
and 84% battery while 90's so 91% battery that's left at the moment yes so
it's looking like it's different gonna be a 2 day mobile phone in terms of
battery life now the other thing is it's not gonna be as good as the redmi note 4
because the room you know for I managed to get about screen on time off 14 hours
was just an amazing result so it's not gonna be as good here remember there's
more pixels on this screen it is a slightly larger screen but it is looking
like that Snapdragon 636 is gonna be just as efficient as the Snapdragon 625
but it's a lot powerful and it does mean a performance of the phone overall does
feel quite good it feels to me almost like a snapdragon 616 I mean it's got
the same GPU I think isn't it the Adreno 509 but over I've noticed performance of
the ROM is good however I have now lean seen a tiny little stutter and I think
that's down to optimization and when you have a look at the synthetic benchmarks
I showed you this in my hands-on video the first one that I released that the
n22 score is really good this is in fact almost double the snapdragon 6 to 5 so
it's a huge step up over that particular chipset
now one other little minor problem I have here with my unit I found that the
wireless reception the range of it see to be about one bar less than my Xiaomi
me max to that I have and the speeds aren't as fast as I was hoping for
normally on the 5g band of wireless AC I can push around 150 hundred and thirty
both upload and download with these particular phones here and when the
flagship ones they get a lot faster with their two by two antenna set up for
example the Snapdragon 835 or the eight flew for five and the same goes for the
4G speeds 4G speeds I mean it could be my carrier but I've been testing this
and I can't really seem to get any faster 4G downloads then about 15
megabits per second and the uploads and this could be because I'm on the Chinese
version even though I've got 4G coverage perhaps the current band that I'm on
isn't the most optimized or fastest band there so that's just one area of minor
concern there a minor complaint I have with the wireless speeds and the 4G
speeds now one other thing too is the front-facing camera will support those
depth effect shots so with your bokeh blurred background simply by pressing
this and it's going to use the AI so this does have the area where the
cameras to do the stitching so stitching between the blue background and then you
in focus is handled of course by the AI now here's a sample I took with the
front-facing camera I'll have maybe a camera review coming up or definitely
will be included at my full review and you can see there the stitching seems to
be pretty good it does a good job so not bad at all there's just quite good
considering this is again a budget mobile phone now when you have a look to
the right of the earpiece I pointed out what looks like I thought an ambient
light sensor there my dental pock so many sensors over here now it could be
an ambient light sensor code in fact be like a one megapixel or two megapixel
tiny little secondary camera there just to maybe perhaps grab the background and
aid those those depth effect selfie shots now as I pointed out in my hands
on that if you want to record 4k video at the moment the stock app does not
support it so you must use a third-party camera app now this is open camera so
you could set it to 4k video now when I did my test in my unboxing video I did
not have the video stabilization and name
so someone in the comments asked me will the electronic image stabilization work
so I'm now using open camera here 4k but I have enabled the electronic image
stabilization which as you can see actually works on 4k as well now I don't
know how this is going to fit the frame rate I have noticed that it will affect
the focus performance a little bit it doesn't seem to be as quick about that
stability seems quite good so see how it locks on now to the hibiscus flower
right here it's capturing that quite well and the ending wall there in the
background so their focus really is quite good
Vera Kazmir has got to get in the shot so great to have on a budget mobile
phone like this priced around 220 us electronic image stabilized 4k web this
kind of quality I feel isn't bad at all so just do that focus test again with my
hand see it locks onto my hand really quick there and onto the background so
that is great and for once we don't have that focus pulsing and breathing issue
that we used to have on literally every single show me mobile phone including
their flagship suffering from that issue now the latest me UI that this is
running this is on Android 8.1 and it's me UI 9.5 that I'm running does now have
gestures so I've been using it and getting used to it and I actually do
like it it's not too bad so if you don't want to have the on-screen navigation
buttons here I really wish they'd still put the capacitive ones in the bottom
bezel but I don't know why they're not doing that anymore maybe it's cost or
something like that but to go back is to simply swipe on this side here and I
find that it works well now if you want to go into your recent apps
it's just hold up and stop in the middle then you go to your recent apps there
and it doesn't mentioned yet the performance of that seems to be pretty
good but now and then I've seen a couple little status so Xiaomi has to do a bit
of optimization and then if you want to go the home screen you just simply swipe
up and you get used to it and it does work I'm actually finding it to be
alright and of course your toggles are at the
top there that's all the same there you notifications and everything there so
I'm still working through all of my tests I'll report back on my full
battery life findings things like charge time will be included more gaming GPS
you know that's gonna all be in my final review so I'm really liking the
Snapdragon 636 it's my first time with this chipset and I can just say straight
away that step aside Snapdragon six to five devices this chipset is just so
much better I really do like it I think it's that perfect blend again from
Qualcomm with battery life and performance so performance the everyone
performance for playing all your games you like out there of course it won't be
as smooth as the flagships it won't give you that 60 frames per second but it
gives you playable frames per second but the best thing is to that it's going to
give you longer battery life because the Snapdragon 805 or the 835 is going to
burn through your battery a lot quicker gaming then it would of course on this
device here and this really has a lot of positives I mean the camera performance
is looking really quite good especially in daylight takes some really stunning
photos a good dynamic range and overall I am really liking this phone it's
looking like an absolute winner here from Xiaomi my only area of concern is
the wireless range and speeds just don't seem to be up to what I would expect
from a mobile like this now don't forget you can win one of these have a look at
the link down in the description of this video and I do have to catch you back
with my full and final review of the xiaomi redmi note 5 and perhaps a camera
comparison as well against my samsung galaxy s7