Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 4 smartphone with Snapdragon 625 in India earlier this month starting at Rs. 9999. It is a minor upgrade compared to last year’s Redmi Note 3 since the display, design and few features remain the same. However, there are a lot of components that go into making the device what that might not be revealed on a regular specs sheet. We did a teardown of the device, similar to the Redmi Note 3 to see what it packs on the inside. Let’s take a peek.
The specifications of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 are as follows:
- 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD 2.5D curved glass display, up to 72% NTSC color gamut, 1000:1 contrast ratio
- 2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 14nm processor with Adreno 506 GPU
- 2GB / 3GB RAM with 32GB storage (eMMC 5.0) / 4GB RAM with 64GB storage (eMMC 5.0), expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD
- MIUI 8 based on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)
- Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano/microSD)
- 13MP rear camera with PDAF, dual-tone LED Flash, f/2.0 aperture
- 5MP front-facing camera, f/2.0 aperture, 85-degree wide-angle lens
- Fingerprint sensor, Infrared sensor
- Dimensions: 151x76x8.45mm; Weight: 175g
- 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS + GLONASS
- 4000mAh (minimum) / 4100mAh (typical) battery
We started off by switching off the device and removing the hybrid SIM card tray. Since the phone doesn’t have any visible screws on the outside we opened the back cover using a slim plastic tool. The major part of back cover has been machined out of aluminum. The top and bottom part of the back cover are covered by plastic to improve signal strength.
The back cover houses cut outs for 3.5mm jack, IR Blaster and secondary microphone. And at the right side we have the volume rocker and power key attached to the cover itself. At the left side we have the opening for the SIM card slot. And at the bottom we have the symmetrical speaker holes with micro USB port cut out in the middle.
After removing the USB assembly and undoing all the screws the top cover of the USB assembly can be removed. This holds the main speaker and vibrator assembly.
As you can see the speaker is only on the one side and the holes on the other side of the cover are just for primary microphone. Now you can disconnect the ribbon cable and remove the micro USB assembly that has a micro USB port and primary microphone.
The 4100mAh battery is held by two strips of strong glue as you can see on the backside of the battery.
Now you can remove the fingerprint sensor which is just glued to the motherboard with a double-sided tape. The fingerprint sensor is made by a company called Goodix.
Now you can remove the ribbon cables connected to the motherboard to free it from the phone body. The motherboard is held in place by 8 screws. Once everything is removed the motherboard comes off the phone body.
We then remove the front facing and rear cameras. The front facing camera is an Samsung S5K5E8 5MP sensor with 1.12-micron pixel while the rear one is a Sony IMX258 13MP 1/3.06-inch sensor with 1.12-micron pixel.
The back side of the logic board houses the battery connector, micro USB connector, display connector, finger print connector, volume rocker connector, Power Supply IC PM8953 and digitizer IC connector.
The front side of the logic board consists of 3.5mm audio jack, ambient
& proximity sensor, hybrid dual SIM slot, secondary microphone, Toshiba 32GB eMMC storage, Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 Processor, 3GB of RAM and Qualcomm power IC PMI8952.
The display panel is BOE NT35532 5.5-inch Full HD panel and it houses the FT5435 FocalTech Touchscreen Controller, internal speaker, display ribbon cable, ribbon cable which connects micro USB to the mother board and antenna cable.
We would like to tell you that the Redmi Note 4 is working fine after reassembling. Even though most hardware parts such as display panel are the same in both the versions, some are different from the Chinese version of the Redmi Note 4 with MediaTek processor such as rear camera which is 13MP Samsung S5K3L8 ISOCELL sensor with 1.12 micro pixel size, Hynix RAM and FT5346 FocalTech Touchscreen Controller. It is not clear if all the batches of Indian units have Sony sensor, so some batches might use Samsung sensor.
We give the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 a repairability score of 8/10. It is fairly easy to open the back cover and replace the internals. Please note that teardowns will most definitely void your warranty so if you are planning to do the same on your device, keep that in mind.