Honor 4X vs Xiaomi Redmi Note: Design, cameras, and battery compared

Honor, a Huawei sub-brand, launched the affordable Honor 4X earlier this year. Launched at Rs 10,499, the smartphone is now available on Flipkart for Rs 9,999. It boasts a big display, battery, and an impressive set of specifications for its price, which can give its competition a run for their money. Speaking of which, the closest competitor is Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 4G, which too comes with a similar set of specifications. We pit the two smartphones against each other to see which comes on top.

Size and design

In terms of size, not much differentiates the two smartphones. With dimensions of 151.9×77.3.8.7mm, the Honor 4X is slimmer and more compact than the Redmi Note 4G (154×78.7×9.5mm). It’s a similar story when it comes to the weight, and at 170 grams, the Honor 4X is lighter to hold than the Redmi Note 4G (185 grams).

While both smartphones boast ample amount of plastics, the Honor 4X doesn’t look cheap. The textured back panel gives a nice balance to the glass front, which is dominated by the display. The same cannot be said about the Redmi Note 4G, whose glossy back panel looks slightly cheap and is prone to fingerprint smudges.

Display

Both the smartphones flaunt a 5.5-inch IPS display. As for resolution, again it is a tie with both sporting HD (1280×720 pixels) resolution.

Processor

The Redmi Note 4G is powered by a 1.6GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor. The Honor 4X, on the other hand, is powered by a newer 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor with 64-bit capabilities.

The processors are paired with Adreno 305 GPU and Adreno 306 GPU respectively. As for RAM, both smartphones feature 2GB each.

Storage

This round is a tie with both smartphones offering 8GB internal memory. This can be further expanded using a microSD card.

Cameras

The Honor 4X features a 13-megapixel autofocus camera at the back with LED flash, second-generation BSI sensor, f/2.0 aperture, and 27mm wide angle lens. It comes with features like Panorama, HDR, audio note, Best photo, all focus and watermark. Up front, there is a 5-megapixel camera for selfie lovers, along with 720p video recording capabilities.

The Redmi Note 4G too has a 13-megapixel camera with f/2.2 aperture, and 28 mm wide-angle lens lets you capture more with each shot. Up front, there is a 5-megapixel selfie camera. In terms of performance though, the cameras on the two smartphones are quite different.

Under bright sunlight, the Honor 4X manages to capture a lot of details, and color reproduction is good as well. The Redmi note however doesn’t capture a lot of details, and lacks sharpness. The results are similar on close up shots as well.

When indoors under ambient lighting, the Honor 4X again comes up top by capturing the most amount of details with stellar color reproduction. While the Redmi Note manages to capture a lot of details as well, again it lacks the sharpness and the punch.

When the light is really bad, both the cameras have to deal with a bit of noise and loss in details. But the photos clicked using either of the cameras are quite decent, when you consider the price segment.

The selfie cameras on both the cameras are more than satisfactory. Both the smartphones boast a small window on the top-right corner that tells you where to look while clicking a photo, while the beauty mode softens your features to make you look better. These beauty edit features also work while taking video calls on the Honor 4X.

(You can check our comparison photos in full resolution here)

Battery

The Honor 4X packs a 3,000mAh battery, and per the company it is good enough to deliver 72 hours of battery life with regular usage. There is also an additional super power saving mode, which keeps the battery life up to 7 days.

The Redmi Note 4G packs a slightly bigger 3,100mAh battery, which the company claims is good enough 38 hours of talktime and up to 775 hours on standby mode.

Connectivity

While both smartphones support LTE connectivity, the Honor 4X has the added advantage of dual-SIM connectivity. Furthermore, both the SIM card slots support LTE networks.

Operating system

The Honor 4X runs on Android KitKat wrapped under EMUI 3.0 UI. The UI brings with it unique features like the magazine style unlock screen, and a lazy mode which makes the UI easy for one-handed use. The Redmi Note 4G ran on Android Jelly Bean during launch, but has since been updated to KitKat as well.

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