Friends+Design
- Striking back panel design, with some beautiful color plays
- Sturdy build quality
- Splash resistant P2i nano coating
- Fingerprint sensor at the back works well
- Face recognition works well too (though it isn't as quick as the solution offered by Realme)
- A bit bulky and chunky at 180g weight and 8.47mm thickness
- The glossy finish on the back and sides means, of course, means that it does attract fingerprints and smudges very easily
Display
- Nice, modern, dewdrop notch display - the colours and viewing angles are decent, and sunlight legibility is good too
- Gorilla Glass 5 for scratch protection
Software
- MIUI is one of the more refined Android UIs and packs many customization options, as well as support for navigation gestures
- Ads and pre-installed bloatware continues to be an issue though (while ads can be disabled but the process is complicated and not many people are likely to end up following it)
Performance
- Decent performance backed by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC - day to day performance is smooth and switching between apps is quick - gaming performance is decent too, as long as you stick to casual titles
- Overall performance isn’t very competitive though for this price bracket, which now has many phones with better SoCs
Camera
- The highlight of the Redmi Y3 is, of course, it's 32MP selfie camera, which, on the whole, does very well, and gives the best selfie camera for this price bracket
- Xiaomi has smartly used a 4-in-1 oversampling technique that saves an 8-megapixel image by default (you can, however, shoot using the full 32-megapixel resolution using a toggle in the viewfinder)
- The selfies come our pretty sharp as expected, but the real difference shows up in low-light selfie photography, where the Redmi Y3 captures more details - and in pitch darkness too, the powerful flash of the Redmi Y3 is significantly better than the competition
- There are also selfie-centric features like Palm Shutter, which counts down to release the shutter when it detects your palm; and Group Selfie, which takes multiple photos and combines them to try to create a frame in which everyone looks good
- Decent dual rear camera setup too (though low light performance is just average)
Battery
- Very good battery life with a 4000mAh battery - you will easily manage a day and a half (and up to 2 days for lighter usage)
Verdict
- The Redmi Y3 is a solid option if you find yourself obsessively taking pictures of yourself for Instagram throughout the day - and need the best budget selfie camera - and care less about gaming performance, or having a sharp display
- On the other hand, if you are looking for better all-rounder phones, you should consider the Redmi Note 7 or Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 - both phones have better displays, more powerful processors, and slightly better rear cameras
