Redmi Note 3 contender Lenovo K5 Note gets a $198 presell price


Xiaomi’s been at the forefront of the budget revolution with its Redmi (erstwhile Hongmi) series of phones. The Redmi Note 3 is arguably the best of the lot, and naturally, there’s competition from fellow phone makers.

The Lenovo K5 Note takes the competition a notch higher by not just offering similar specs, but by also looking a lot like the Redmi Note 3. If you haven’t been following GizChina as much as you should be, let me tell you that the K5 Note is an MT6755 Helio P10 phone with 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM.

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Besides that, the K5 Note features a 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080p display, a 13 mega-pixel rear camera, 8 mega-pixel front camera and a 3500mAh battery. All of it sounds like it’s clearly going for the Redmi Note 3…

News from China is that resellers are starting to expect stock of this phone, and have thus listed the device for $198. This makes the K5 Note a bit more expensive than the Redmi Note 3, so is there a reason why you’d pick this over the latter?

Disclaimer: We may be compensated by some of the companies whose products we talk about, but our articles and reviews are always our honest opinions. For more details, you can check out our editorial guidelines and learn about how we use affiliate links.

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104 Comments

  1. Rashad Hussain
    July 6, 2016

    It’s not a contender with that CPU. The P10 is old now so makes this phone a none starter.

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 6, 2016

      lol the p10 is old now? then how old is say the ever so popular 6753? the p20 isnt even out yet

      • Karly Johnston
        July 6, 2016

        The P10 is newer than the X10 yet inferior to even that.

        • quodvadis
          July 7, 2016

          Speed isn’t the only thing that an SOC need to has. I’ll take a well balanced SOC with good battery life, good enough app speed (so the competitor open apps 0.05s faster? big f deal), and good gpu over a speed demon (aka, open apps 0.05s faster) battery killer SOC.

          And we haven’t even talked about the whole package (THE PHONE itself).

          • Assefa Hanson
            July 7, 2016

            dont bother seems like people nowadays just want specs that dont even work so they can brag or if its old it must be worse

            • Rashad Hussain
              July 7, 2016

              Nope because it’s proven Mediatek < Snapdragon.

            • Assefa Hanson
              July 7, 2016

              the fact that you generalized seems a little ignorant to me mediatek chips are cheaper and still more energy efficient and dont have a history of heating issues, snapdragon is open and more powerful(but power hungry because of this) there is no definitive superiority it all comes down to what a person wants

            • Wolvie
              July 8, 2016

              Nah i can only say that each SOC got its own weakness and strength. So it is a take and give situation to which SOC you prefer.

              Mediatek is actually a good SOC but again their Android support is below standard. Their Android power management could be much better and lot of bugs never got fix like forever. But hey they just busy releasing new SOC without improving the current one.

              Couple years ago i always buy mediatek smatphones and recommended them to friends, relatives. Why ? because Mediatek smartphone WAS much cheaper than Snapdragon. Please note the wording “WAS”. Nowadays (thanks to xiaomi, OnePlus, LeEco, etc) Smartphone with good snapdragon SOC 650-652 already selling cheaply and even cheaper than low-end MTK6753 so why i want to buy mediatek ???

            • Assefa Hanson
              July 8, 2016

              i wouldnt say its thanks to any oem but rather because the market is getting saturated hence why 3gb of ram is so cheap, but it still remains if you compare each soc category e.g flagship mediatek is still cheaper than flagship snap and also low end vs low end vs i barely see 650/652 being cheaper than 6753 the condition is usually from xiaomi which even has snapdragon 820 for 300 dollars, the x20 for example is far cheaper than 820

              but your last point switched to generalization of the mediatek brand vs soc having its own weakness and strength like you said in the beginning, i was expecting you to say “so why i want to buy 6753” your contradicting your self a bit i dont hate any of these socs i still believe they both have general adv and disadv

              last adv of mediatek is versatility you will have more spec combinations to choose from and more brands to pick from look at the qiku n4 how amazing that is for the money

            • Adam Irvine
              July 7, 2016

              Unfortunately a comment like this will generally be received and responded to with negativity here…

              There seems to be a lot of love here for that Mediatek crap…

              Haha!

              Hey I was all for the cheap Mediatek stuff back in the day when THL were making phones like the W100, W8S etc, even had a Zopo ZP998, and a ZP999 but each one had its problems, Mediatek were always cagey about source code and so it all lead to crap software support, though Zopo were massively to blame on that one!

              Mediatek then released the fantastic 6752 and it found its way to phones like the Lenovo K3 Note which is a fantastic little(but big) device especially for the money, they then replaced the 6752 with the 6753 because the 6752 was basically too good and was fu*king up their X10 sales (I believe?) And so basically, they’re just a bunch of tw*ts now…

              One good thing they have done though is made Qualcomm competitive, both with product spec and price so I will thank them for that, otherwise they need to go straight back to the drawing board because they have nothing special in the limelight these days…

            • Rashad Hussain
              July 7, 2016

              I have the K3 Note, that’s why I’m so anti-Mediatek. The thermals are terrible, just after 5 minutes of gaming it heats up and the games lag.

            • Adam Irvine
              July 7, 2016

              I can’t comment on gaming as that’s not what it gets used for but out of curiosity, what rom are you running? Running the official Android 6 global rom and she runs great…

              (Please consider the cost too…)

            • Rashad Hussain
              July 7, 2016

              Cucco92 ROM, his latest one. Can you link me the official global ROM please.

            • Adam Irvine
              July 8, 2016

              Useful links are here…

              http://forum.xda-developers.com/k3-note/general/organized-thread-lenovo-k3-note-k50-t3158522/page550

              http://forum.xda-developers.com/k3-note/general/official-firmware-lenovo-k3-note-direct-t3326424/page13

              I can’t remember the exact path I took to get it onto the ROW rom (Rest of World) but basically you’ll be using SPTools to flash it once you find it, you may need to flash a full VibeUI rom first and ‘upgrade’ to a ROW rom from there but once you do, it’ll pull the OTAs through and get you up to the latest Marshmallow..

            • NextHype
              July 8, 2016

              You could have bought a SD810 phone and become anti-Qualcomm because of overheating and throttling issues… that’s funny.

          • Karly Johnston
            July 8, 2016

            They improve battery life by giving it a crappy gpu. That is not a trade off, that is a downgrade.

            • quodvadis
              July 8, 2016

              P10 is not X10 successor. X20 is.

              P10’s GPU is more than capable for many tasks and games. For the given price, it’s quite fine. Newer doesn’t mean that it always have to surpass the “older” one, not when they have different price segmentation.

              Though I doubt you understand lol

              Note: X10’s GPU can be hot af. If P10’s GPU is cooler than that while retaining most of the power, I’d be down with it.

            • Karly Johnston
              July 9, 2016

              You can get X20 devices for $180. P10 devices run in the same range. P10 is overpriced underperforming garbage.

            • quodvadis
              July 9, 2016

              I’m getting one of those x20 device so I know. However I’m still getting a P10 equipped 5″ phone with good features the moment one is available. There IS a place for both SOC.

              I’d get a good 5″ phone with X20 instead IF they are available though.

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      By that logic SD61/5x are old and “none starter” lol

  2. yalok
    July 6, 2016

    Note 3 Pro has SD650.
    P10 has no chance against it.

    • Adam Irvine
      July 6, 2016

      I was going to say something along those lines, I would add also that the Redmi Note 3 has a bigger battery too.

      Ive ordered 7x Redmi Note 3 Pro (3GB/32GB) for Friends and Family now and I can honestly say, they’ll take some beating!

      What an amazing device for the money and the regular OTAs make it look like Xiaomi genuinely do care about their user experience also!

      • quodvadis
        July 7, 2016

        I’ll take a solid speedy OS with only occasional security updates over a slow battery-guzzler OS that needs to be patched every week. I need to use my phone, not the other way around.

        Flashing my redmi to cyanogenmod was one of the best decision I took for the phone.

        • Nilzie
          July 7, 2016

          Miui battery guzzling? Wrong. And it doesn’t need to be updated unless you want new features and security patches. Talk about making things up…

          • quodvadis
            July 7, 2016

            lol if you say so. I have experienced it first hand, perhaps you just don’t have another phone to compare and happy with yours. Nothing’s wrong being a frog inside a well.

            • Wolvie
              July 7, 2016

              Actually i couldn’t agree more about Cyanogen. In fact i love them a lot. Speed,stability and battery wise, MIUI cannot even compare to Cyanogen.

              But problem is nowaday i am not so free anymore like i used to be so now lesser time to mess around with Cyanogen.

              I know the latest CM12, CM13 from XDADeveloper are quite mature, but also got some features that still not working properly yet compare to MIUI. I do have great respect to those Cyanogen Developers that spend numerous hours of their time to do the coding, debug,compile, testing their Cyanogen release.

              But again unfortunately for now i need something that is ready to use without need to worry about certain unknown Cyanogen bugs. Maybe it sound selfish but once you got married with kids, hectic work schedule, and earn not enough dollars for your family, you will know what i mean. I need to prioritize what is more important than to spend time debugging android firmware LOL. It is sad but true.

              From time to time i still login to XDADeveloper for any good news for CM13. once i see lesser complained about it then it is time for me to wipe everything and start as Cyanogen user for my redmi note 3 pro.

            • quodvadis
              July 7, 2016

              I don’t even mess around with mine. Installed it and that’s it. Had more problem with Miui than Cyanogenmod.

            • Wolvie
              July 7, 2016

              Ah then you must tell me which recovery and Cyanogen that you are using ?

              Now i am not a heavy smartphone user LOL so MIUI is more than sufficient. But if i can have a better android, why not ?

              Nowadays only using for calling, sms (very seldom) ,watzup, and occasionally internet browsing. Sometime need to share with my kids if they want to install games. That’s all.

              Btw actually there is a MIUI bug that bother me, a lot of people from certain countries complained that they lost their 4G LTE connection once they upgraded to MIUI 7.3.5.0 or newer. So only 3G is available.for those countries for newer MIUI firmware

            • quodvadis
              July 7, 2016

              grabbed the ones in needrom, didn’t really remember which one.

            • Adam Irvine
              July 7, 2016

              Stick to XDA… Needrom gets out of date fast…

            • Adam Irvine
              July 7, 2016

              Sounds like you might have been on a Reseller specific rom… Everyone I know with one has had theirs flashed away from GearBests strange rom version obto the official OTA path and they’re all mega happy with them including the battery performance, one of my friends says he has admittedly turned GPS, 4G and Bluetooth off but in return gets 3 days battery out of it… The only thing the majority of them have done is replace the stock launcher because they don’t like the no app drawer iPhone clone style stuff…

          • balcobomber25
            July 10, 2016

            He always exaggerates when it comes to Xiaomi.

      • Wolvie
        July 7, 2016

        Not sure how to say it , but yeah nowaday pricing for redmi note 3 pro (3GB/32GB) already start selling below $170 at aliexpress from some reputable shops there.

        With this kind of aggressive pricing, i will not even look at other competitor that still using mediatek P10. maybe it is different if they use X20 or x30

        I do know that some features those P10 wins but come to basic for smartphone for me is always the same : Speed, Battery consumption, durability, Android Software support.

        As for Redmi note 3 pro Camera i find it very descent, it can capture most of the image sharply and fast. For low light i cannot argue that the image is not so good and again any other smarphone brands now can take very good image at low light at price below $180 ????

        I am not Xiaomi Fanboys, heck even this is the first time i bought Xiaomi smartphone and i fell in love in it. it just feel very good to buy at such a low price and get this kind of superb quality smartphone.

        And in 2 weeks, i already got 2 OTA updates already. Latest one now is MIUI 7.3.7.0 global stable (still running lollipop though , not yet marsmallow, but coming MIUI 8.0 i think they will upgrade to M already)

        Mediatek support for their SOC i can say quite sucks, don’t expect any future upgrade or bug fixes. You bought it , use it and bare with all the bugs inside forever. I bought some mediatek smartphones before and believe me for 1 year using, there is none update from OTA.

        • balcobomber25
          July 10, 2016

          I agree with most of your points. But having a mediatek SoC doesn’t prevent upgrades or bug fixes. Especially the latter, bug fixes have very little (for the most part) to do with the type of SoC. It really comes down to the brand and model. The Mediatek Redmi phones get the same MIUI updates.

    • balcobomber25
      July 6, 2016

      A phone is made up of a whole lot more than just a SoC. For the majority of people that will buy this a P10 is more than powerful enough. A lot will come down to how everything else compares to the RN3P like camera, battery (smaller on paper), audio and software.

      • yalok
        July 7, 2016

        It depends from what is more important to people.
        It could be that the camera, audio is better, plus there is independent sdcard slot.

      • highwind
        July 10, 2016

        the RMN3P is easily the best of the bunch for the full AOSP / Cyanogenmod support alone…

        • balcobomber25
          July 10, 2016

          For you it is the best. Most people don’t ever change the rom. The modding community only makes up a small percentage of the phone buying population. For the rest it will come down to the things I mentioned.

    • MattD
      July 6, 2016

      Even meizu m3 note has the same soc and similar specs, but still bigger battery…

      • Nilzie
        July 7, 2016

        And is cheaper and doesn’t look ugly

    • NextHype
      July 7, 2016

      It could compete with Note 3 (X10), not with Note 3 Pro (SD650)
      But now there is the price factor… as its pricier than N3 Pro, and a lot pricier than N3 ^^

  3. Lupo
    July 6, 2016

    I’ve been disappointed with Xiaomi high-end range in the past few years, but Redmi Note 3 Pro is the best value in mid-range segment.

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 8, 2016

      redmi note 3 is not the best value in mid range when we have the qiku n4 lurking

      • Lupo
        July 8, 2016

        This phone is useless outside of Asia. If you also consider international availability and after sale support, Xiaomi is better value.

      • highwind
        July 10, 2016

        The N4 is a plastic built which many people (me included) generally dislike
        The N4S in Thema other hand might be tough competition

        But to be fair:
        RMN3 Pro is widely available for over half a year now

  4. Assefa Hanson
    July 6, 2016

    i would probably give this a try over the redmi since the note 3 pro camera isnt so swell

  5. Riccardo Benzoni
    July 6, 2016

    Just for having NFC, I know quite some people which will put it in front of the list.

  6. Rashad Hussain
    July 6, 2016

    It’s not a contender with that CPU. The P10 is old now so makes this phone a none starter.

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 6, 2016

      lol the p10 is old now? then how old is say the ever so popular 6753? the p20 isnt even out yet

    • Karly Johnston
      July 7, 2016

      The P10 is newer than the X10 yet inferior to even that.

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      Speed isn’t the only thing that an SOC need to has. I’ll take a well balanced SOC with good battery life, good enough app speed (so the competitor open apps 0.05s faster? big f deal), and good gpu over a speed demon (aka, open apps 0.05s faster) battery killer SOC.

      And we haven’t even talked about the whole package (THE PHONE itself).

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      By that logic SD61/5x are old and “none starter” lol

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 7, 2016

      dont bother seems like people nowadays just want specs that dont even work so they can brag or if its old it must be worse

    • Rashad Hussain
      July 7, 2016

      Nope because it’s proven Mediatek < Snapdragon.

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 7, 2016

      the fact that you generalized seems a little ignorant to me mediatek chips are cheaper and still more energy efficient and dont have a history of heating issues, snapdragon is open and more powerful(but power hungry because of this) there is no definitive superiority it all comes down to what a person wants

    • Adam Irvine
      July 7, 2016

      Unfortunately a comment like this will generally be received and responded to with negativity here…

      There seems to be a lot of love here for that Mediatek crap…

      Haha!

      Hey I was all for the cheap Mediatek stuff back in the day when THL were making phones like the W100, W8S etc, even had a Zopo ZP998, and a ZP999 but each one had its problems, Mediatek were always cagey about source code and so it all lead to crap software support, though Zopo were massively to blame on that one!

      Mediatek then released the fantastic 6752 and it found its way to phones like the Lenovo K3 Note which is a fantastic little(but big) device especially for the money, they then replaced the 6752 with the 6753 because the 6752 was basically too good and was fu*king up their X10 sales (I believe?) And so basically, they’re just a bunch of tw*ts now…

      One good thing they have done though is made Qualcomm competitive, both with product spec and price so I will thank them for that, otherwise they need to go straight back to the drawing board because they have nothing special in the limelight these days…

    • Rashad Hussain
      July 7, 2016

      I have the K3 Note, that’s why I’m so anti-Mediatek. The thermals are terrible, just after 5 minutes of gaming it heats up and the games lag.

    • Adam Irvine
      July 7, 2016

      I can’t comment on gaming as that’s not what it gets used for but out of curiosity, what rom are you running? Running the official Android 6 global rom and she runs great…

      (Please consider the cost too…)

    • Rashad Hussain
      July 7, 2016

      Cucco92 ROM, his latest one. Can you link me the official global ROM please.

    • Guest
      July 8, 2016

      Nah i can only say that each SOC got its own weakness and strength. So it is a take and give situation to which SOC you prefer.

      Mediatek is actually a good SOC but again their Android support is below standard. Their Android power management could be much better and lot of bugs never got fix like forever. But hey they just busy releasing new SOC without improving the current one.

      Couple years ago i always buy mediatek smatphones and recommended them to friends, relatives. Why ? because Mediatek smartphone WAS much cheaper than Snapdragon. Please note the wording “WAS”. Nowadays (thanks to xiaomi, OnePlus, LeEco, etc) Smartphone with good snapdragon SOC 650-652 already selling cheaply and even cheaper than low-end MTK6753 so why i want to buy mediatek ???

    • Adam Irvine
      July 8, 2016

      Useful links are here…

      http://forum.xda-developers.com/k3-note/general/organized-thread-lenovo-k3-note-k50-t3158522/page550

      http://forum.xda-developers.com/k3-note/general/official-firmware-lenovo-k3-note-direct-t3326424/page13

      I can’t remember the exact path I took to get it onto the ROW rom (Rest of World) but basically you’ll be using SPTools to flash it once you find it, you may need to flash a full VibeUI rom first and ‘upgrade’ to a ROW rom from there but once you do, it’ll pull the OTAs through and get you up to the latest Marshmallow..

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 8, 2016

      i wouldnt say its thanks to any oem but rather because the market is getting saturated hence why 3gb of ram is so cheap, but it still remains if you compare each soc category e.g flagship mediatek is still cheaper than flagship snap and also low end vs low end vs i barely see 650/652 being cheaper than 6753 the condition is usually from xiaomi which even has snapdragon 820 for 300 dollars, the x20 for example is far cheaper than 820

      but your last point switched to generalization of the mediatek brand vs soc having its own weakness and strength like you said in the beginning, i was expecting you to say “so why i want to buy 6753” your contradicting your self a bit i dont hate any of these socs i still believe they both have general adv and disadv

      last adv of mediatek is versatility you will have more spec combinations to choose from and more brands to pick from look at the qiku n4 how amazing that is for the money

    • NextHype
      July 8, 2016

      You could have bought a SD810 phone and become anti-Qualcomm because of overheating and throttling issues… that’s funny.

    • Karly Johnston
      July 8, 2016

      They improve battery life by giving it a crappy gpu. That is not a trade off, that is a downgrade.

    • quodvadis
      July 9, 2016

      P10 is not X10 successor. X20 is.

      P10’s GPU is more than capable for many tasks and games. For the given price, it’s quite fine. Newer doesn’t mean that it always have to surpass the “older” one, not when they have different price segmentation.

      Though I doubt you understand lol

      Note: X10’s GPU can be hot af. If P10’s GPU is cooler than that while retaining most of the power, I’d be down with it.

    • Karly Johnston
      July 9, 2016

      You can get X20 devices for $180. P10 devices run in the same range. P10 is overpriced underperforming garbage.

    • quodvadis
      July 9, 2016

      I’m getting one of those x20 device so I know. However I’m still getting a P10 equipped 5″ phone with good features the moment one is available. There IS a place for both SOC.

      I’d get a good 5″ phone with X20 instead IF they are available though.

  7. yalok
    July 6, 2016

    Note 3 Pro has SD650.
    P10 has no chance against it.

    • Adam Irvine
      July 6, 2016

      I was going to say something along those lines, I would add also that the Redmi Note 3 has a bigger battery too.

      Ive ordered 7x Redmi Note 3 Pro (3GB/32GB) for Friends and Family now and I can honestly say, they’ll take some beating!

      What an amazing device for the money and the regular OTAs make it look like Xiaomi genuinely do care about their user experience also!

    • balcobomber25
      July 6, 2016

      A phone is made up of a whole lot more than just a SoC. For the majority of people that will buy this a P10 is more than powerful enough. A lot will come down to how everything else compares to the RN3P like camera, battery (smaller on paper), audio and software.

    • MattD
      July 6, 2016

      Even meizu m3 note has the same soc and similar specs, but still bigger battery…

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      I’ll take a solid speedy OS with only occasional security updates over a slow battery-guzzler OS that needs to be patched every week. I need to use my phone, not the other way around.

      Flashing my redmi to cyanogenmod was one of the best decision I took for the phone.

    • Guest
      July 7, 2016

      Not sure how to say it , but yeah nowaday pricing for redmi note 3 pro (3GB/32GB) already start selling below $170 at aliexpress from some reputable shops there.

      With this kind of aggressive pricing, i will not even look at other competitor that still using mediatek P10. maybe it is different if they use X20 or x30

      I do know that some features those P10 wins but come to basic for smartphone for me is always the same : Speed, Battery consumption, durability, Android Software support.

      As for Redmi note 3 pro Camera i find it very descent, it can capture most of the image sharply and fast. For low light i cannot argue that the image is not so good and again any other smarphone brands now can take very good image at low light at price below $180 ????

      I am not Xiaomi Fanboys, heck even this is the first time i bought Xiaomi smartphone and i fell in love in it. it just feel very good to buy at such a low price and get this kind of superb quality smartphone.

      And in 2 weeks, i already got 2 OTA updates already. Latest one now is MIUI 7.3.7.0 global stable (still running lollipop though , not yet marsmallow, but coming MIUI 8.0 i think they will upgrade to M already)

      Mediatek support for their SOC i can say quite sucks, don’t expect any future upgrade or bug fixes. You bought it , use it and bare with all the bugs inside forever. I bought some mediatek smartphones before and believe me for 1 year using, there is none update from OTA.

    • Nilzie
      July 7, 2016

      And is cheaper and doesn’t look ugly

    • Nilzie
      July 7, 2016

      Miui battery guzzling? Wrong. And it doesn’t need to be updated unless you want new features and security patches. Talk about making things up…

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      lol if you say so. I have experienced it first hand, perhaps you just don’t have another phone to compare and happy with yours. Nothing’s wrong being a frog inside a well.

    • yalok
      July 7, 2016

      It depends from what is more important to people.
      It could be that the camera, audio is better, plus there is independent sdcard slot.

    • Guest
      July 7, 2016

      Actually i couldn’t agree more about Cyanogen. In fact i love them a lot. Speed,stability and battery wise, MIUI cannot even compare to Cyanogen.

      But problem is nowaday i am not so free anymore like i used to be so now lesser time to mess around with Cyanogen.

      I know the latest CM12, CM13 from XDADeveloper are quite mature, but also got some features that still not working properly yet compare to MIUI. I do have great respect to those Cyanogen Developers that spend numerous hours of their time to do the coding, debug,compile, testing their Cyanogen release.

      But again unfortunately for now i need something that is ready to use without need to worry about certain unknown Cyanogen bugs. Maybe it sound selfish but once you got married with kids, hectic work schedule, and earn not enough dollars for your family, you will know what i mean. I need to prioritize what is more important than to spend time debugging android firmware LOL. It is sad but true.

      From time to time i still login to XDADeveloper for any good news for CM13. once i see lesser complained about it then it is time for me to wipe everything and start as Cyanogen user for my redmi note 3 pro.

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      I don’t even mess around with mine. Installed it and that’s it. Had more problem with Miui than Cyanogenmod.

    • Guest
      July 7, 2016

      Ah then you must tell me which recovery and Cyanogen that you are using ?

      Now i am not a heavy smartphone user LOL so MIUI is more than sufficient. But if i can have a better android, why not ?

      Nowadays only using for calling, sms (very seldom) ,watzup, and occasionally internet browsing. Sometime need to share with my kids if they want to install games. That’s all.

      Btw actually there is a MIUI bug that bother me, a lot of people from certain countries complained that they lost their 4G LTE connection once they upgraded to MIUI 7.3.5.0 or newer. So only 3G is available.for those countries for newer MIUI firmware

    • quodvadis
      July 7, 2016

      grabbed the ones in needrom, didn’t really remember which one.

    • NextHype
      July 7, 2016

      It could compete with Note 3 (X10), not with Note 3 Pro (SD650)
      But now there is the price factor… as its pricier than N3 Pro, and a lot pricier than N3 ^^

    • Adam Irvine
      July 7, 2016

      Sounds like you might have been on a Reseller specific rom… Everyone I know with one has had theirs flashed away from GearBests strange rom version onto the official OTA path and they’re all mega happy with them including the battery performance, one of my friends says he has admittedly turned GPS, 4G and Bluetooth off but in return gets 3 days battery out of it… The only thing the majority of them have done is replace the stock launcher because they don’t like the no app drawer iPhone clone style stuff…

    • Adam Irvine
      July 7, 2016

      Stick to XDA… Needrom gets out of date fast…

    • provokanter Tabellenführer
      July 10, 2016

      the RMN3P is easily the best of the bunch for the full AOSP / Cyanogenmod support alone…

    • balcobomber25
      July 10, 2016

      For you it is the best. Most people don’t ever change the rom. The modding community only makes up a small percentage of the phone buying population. For the rest it will come down to the things I mentioned.

    • balcobomber25
      July 11, 2016

      I agree with most of your points. But having a mediatek SoC doesn’t prevent upgrades or bug fixes. Especially the latter, bug fixes have very little (for the most part) to do with the type of SoC. It really comes down to the brand and model. The Mediatek Redmi phones get the same MIUI updates.

    • balcobomber25
      July 11, 2016

      He always exaggerates when it comes to Xiaomi.

  8. Lupo
    July 6, 2016

    I’ve been disappointed with Xiaomi high-end range in the past few years, but Redmi Note 3 Pro is the best value in mid-range segment.

    • Assefa Hanson
      July 8, 2016

      redmi note 3 is not the best value in mid range when we have the qiku n4 lurking

    • Lupo
      July 8, 2016

      This phone is useless outside of Asia. If you also consider international availability and after sale support, Xiaomi is better value.

    • provokanter Tabellenführer
      July 10, 2016

      The N4 is a plastic built which many people (me included) generally dislike
      The N4S in Thema other hand might be tough competition

      But to be fair:
      RMN3 Pro is widely available for over half a year now

  9. Assefa Hanson
    July 6, 2016

    i would probably give this a try over the redmi since the note 3 pro camera isnt so swell

  10. Riccardo Benzoni
    July 6, 2016

    Just for having NFC, I know quite some people which would put it in front of the list.
    At that price won’t make much sense tho, I’ve seen Vibe X3 a few times hitting the 165€ mark, that’s on another level compared to both.

  11. NextHype
    July 7, 2016

    Le’s hope they really enhanced camera quality over K3, which was really poor.
    And stopped embedding bloatware and spyware in their OS. But i wouldn’t count on this.

    • Dominó85
      July 8, 2016

      Poor quality camera on K3 Note? HAHAHA Should I share some pictures to prove You are wrong? Camera quality improved a lot from the beginning. The 5.0 Vibe UI 2.0 rom had some quality issues, but right after the 5.1.1 update fixed it. And now with 6.0.2 MM rom the images are clear and detailed. No or just not mentionable cromatic aberration. And when You install a MIUI V7 rom for K3 Note You will be really impressed about the camera of the device.

      • NextHype
        July 8, 2016

        Why are you laughing ? Out of the box, K3 Note’s camera was shitty, i bought one for my GF and felt stupid when i tried her phone’s camera : i thought i should have checked camera perf before buying this phone.
        It took MM ROM version to update quality, you say it yourself. Customers want their phone to be functional out of the box or ASAP (for Xiaomi fanboyz) , not to wait 1 year to obtain what they paid for.

        BTW i was searching a new ROM for my GF phone, i may try MIUI 7. Can you confirm this ROM doesn’t eat too much RAM and doesn’t stutter ? Which version did you get ? from XDA or needrom ?

  12. NextHype
    July 7, 2016

    Le’s hope they really enhanced camera quality over K3, which was really poor.
    And stopped embedding bloatware and spyware in their OS. But i wouldn’t count on this.

    • Dominó85
      July 8, 2016

      Poor quality camera on K3 Note? HAHAHA Should I share some pictures to prove You are wrong? Camera quality improved a lot from the beginning. The 5.0 Vibe UI 2.0 rom had some quality issues, but right after the 5.1.1 update fixed it. And now with 6.0.2 MM rom the images are clear and detailed. No or just not mentionable cromatic aberration. And when You install a MIUI V7 rom for K3 Note You will be really impressed about the camera of the device.

    • NextHype
      July 8, 2016

      Why are you laughing ? Out of the box, K3 Note’s camera was shitty, i bought one for my GF and felt stupid when i tried her phone’s camera : i thought i should have checked camera perf before buying this phone.
      It took MM ROM version to update quality, you say it yourself. Customers want their phone to be functional out of the box or ASAP (for Xiaomi fanboyz) , not to wait 1 year to obtain what they paid for.

      BTW i was searching a new ROM for my GF phone, i may try MIUI 7. Can you confirm this ROM doesn’t eat too much RAM and doesn’t stutter ? Which version did you get ? from XDA or needrom ?

  13. Muhammad Yasir
    July 7, 2016

    isnt K5 sort of… OLD ASS ?!

    P.S this K5 has been released BEFORE , right ?!

  14. Guest
    July 7, 2016

    isnt K5 sort of… OLD ASS ?!

    P.S this K5 has been released BEFORE , right ?!

  15. TheOracle
    July 8, 2016

    Everyone commenting here seems to be missing the most important point. Competition gives us more choices and therefore cheaper prices. A win for the consumer.

  16. TheOracle
    July 8, 2016

    Everyone commenting here seems to be missing the most important point. Competition gives us more choices and therefore cheaper prices. A win for the consumer.