Xiaomi Hongmi 1s official, goes on pre-order next week in China

As Xiaomi gets ready to release Redmi (Hongmi) in Singapore, the company has introduced a tweaked version of the smartphone in its home market. Dubbed as Xiaomi Hongmi 1s, the smartphone keep the same price – 799 yuan – as the original Hongmi.

According to Xiaomi, it will go on pre-order beginning February 20 on the company website. There is no word on the availability date.

Coming to the specifications front, the main difference between the original Hongmi and 1s is the powering processor. Xiaomi has ditched MediaTek for Qualcomm in Hongmi 1s and is using 1.6GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor (same SoC present in Moto G).

Other specifications of the phone are almost same but there are a couple of tweaks. Xiaomi Hongmi features a 4.7-inch 720p HD display, Android 4.3-based MIUI V5, 8MP rear camera, 1.6MP front camera and support for dual-SIM (GSM + CDMA). The phone also comes with 8GB of internal storage, microSD card slot, 2000 mAh battery, Bluetooth 4.0, USB OTG, and Wi-Fi.

At this price-tag, Xiaomi Hongmi is a no-brainer and probably the best budget Android phone on-paper worldwide.

In related news, Xiaomi is also rumoured to release a Hongmi 2 smartphone but we are yet to hear anything from the company. The phone is expected to arrive with MediaTek’s octa-core processor and better specs than the original model.