Lei Jun, founder and CEO of China's mobile company Xiaomi, shows new features at launch ceremony of Xiaomi Phone 4 in Beijing
Lei Jun, founder and CEO of China's mobile company Xiaomi, shows the new features at a launch ceremony of Xiaomi Phone 4, in Beijing, July 22, 2014. China's Xiaomi unveiled on Tuesday its new flagship Mi 4 smartphone, aimed squarely at the premium handset market dominated by Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. REUTERS

The Xiaomi Redmi 2 has been officially announced in China and the handset it will go on sale from Jan 9. The Redmi 2 will replace the Xiaomi Redmi 1S which is one of the best-selling budget smartphones of 2014. Here is a comparison between the Redmi 2 and the Redmi 1S to know what better features are available on the newer handse

Design And Display
According to GizmoChina, the Xiaomi Redmi 2's thickness is 9.2 mm and it weighs 132 g whereas the Redmi 1S's thickness is 9.9 mm and its weight is 158 g. The Redmi 2 is more compact as it measures whereas the Redmi 1S measures 137 x 69 mm.

The Redmi 2 and the Redmi 1S both feature a 4.7-inch IPS display supporting 720 pixels resolution along with a pixel count of 312 ppi. So, there is no improvement in this segment.

Processor, Storage And RAM
The Redmi 2 comes with an improved Snapdragon 410 chipset includes a 64-bit quad-core Cortex A-53 CPU producing a speed of 1.2 GHz CPU along with Adreno 306 GPU. The older device features Snapdragon 400 chipset that comes with a quad-core Cortex A-53 processor that can reach a max speed of 1.6 GHz. The chipset of Redmi 1S also includes an Adreno 305 graphics.

The Redmi 2 as well as the Redmi 1S come with 1 GB of RAM and in-built storage capacity of 8 GB. When it comes to external storage, the newer handset comes with support for up to 64 GB of microSD like the Redmi 1S handset.

Camera And Software
Both the handset come with 8 MP camera on the rear side. The Redmi 1S came with 1.6 MP front-facing camera whereas the Redmi 2's front-facing camera has been bumped to 2 MP that can shoot 720 pixels videos. The Redmi 1S came with Android 4.3 JellyBean onboard, but the Redmi 2 features Android v4.4.4 KitKat OS.

Connectivity And Battery
The Redmi 2 and the Redmi 1S come with dual-SIM capabilities. The Redmi 1S supports 2G and 3G connections, but the successor model supports 4G LTE on both the SIM slots. It also supports 2G and 3G connectivity. The other connectivity features of Redmi 2 is quite same as those present on predecessor model such as Wi-Fi, v4.0 Bluetooth, microUSB 2.0, aGPS and GLONASS. The Redmi 1S features a 2,000 mAh battery. However, Xiaomi has upgraded the battery capacity to 2,200 mAh on the Redmi 2 handset.

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