Xiaomi will start its 2021 in the same great style as it will close the year. On January 5, the company will unveil a new smartphone in India featuring a 108MP camera. That is just a few days after the release of the Mi 11 series as the world’s first smartphones sporting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. While the flagship may take a couple of weeks to hit the shelves, Indian customers will get their hands on the Mi 10i, which is nothing but a rebranded Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G.
Back in November, Xiaomi finally revealed to China its Redmi Note 9 series. However, it was different from the devices released in global markets earlier this year. The lineup brings the Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G, Redmi Note 9 5G, and a Redmi Note 9 4G. The latter already made its debut in India as Redmi 9 Power. Now, the higher variant will reach the competitive market as Xiaomi Mi 10i. After January 5, the vanilla Note 9 5G will be the only device needing a global launch.
Ahead of the phone’s launch, its official color names, as well as memory variants have appeared in the web. The memory variants and colorways were tipped before by popular Indian leakster Ishan Agarwal. However, he didn’t reveal the actual names of these colors. Thanks to another Twitter user called Indranil Chakraborty, we know the marketing names of the colorways.
#Mi10i @XiaomiIndia @manukumarjain @sumitsonal pic.twitter.com/E7jxWyfZAa
Gizchina News of the week
— Indranil Chakraborty (@Iamnil7) December 23, 2020
The Mi 10i will come in Midnight Black, Pacific Sunrise, and Atlantic Blue colorways. The device will hit the shelves in variants with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of Internal Storage. But there is also a higher variant with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of Storage. Worth noting that the Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G has a microSD card slot. Therefore, the Mi 10i will be one of the few Xiaomi Mi devices to allow memory expansion. Interestingly, there is a variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Internal Storage. However, this particular variant will not hit the shelves in India.
There’s no exclusive color coming to India. In fact, these colors are the same ones found in Note 9 Pro 5G. The naming is a big difference here. In China, we have Silent Sky, Lake Light, and Blue Sea. In Europe, the Mi 10 Lite which is a close sibling, has Pearl Gray, Rose Gold beach, and Atlantic Blue colors.
We expect more details to appear in the coming days. However, the specs of the device aren’t exactly a secret. It packs a 6.67-inch LCD with a center-aligned punch hole and a 120Hz refresh rate. It has a Quad-Camera setup led by a 108MP shooter. Power comes from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G SoC. We have a 4,820mAh battery keeping lights on complete with 33W fast-charging. The device comes with Android 10-based MIUI 12. Would be great to see Android 11 shipping alongside the new variant.
