Ultra-budget Xiaomi Redmi Go up for sale: Should you buy this Google Android Go edition phone?

Xiaomi earlier in the week unveiled the company's latest mobile Redmi Go smartphone in India and now, it will soon be up a sale for the first time later today.

The new Redmi Go cost Rs 4,499 and will be up for grabs at 12:00 pm across Mi.com, Flipkart and Mi Home stores. As part of the launch offer, prospective buyers will get a Rs 2,200 cash-back with up to 100GB data free with Reliance Jio.

Is Xiaomi Redmi Go worth buying?

Absolutely Yes! You should go for it. Xiaomi Redmi Go is a tailor-made phone for people who are currently using a keypad-based feature phone and plan to migrate to touch-screen mobile and to those who are looking for a secondary phone.

Earlier in the week, I witnessed an online rant from some fellow citizen on Twitter complaining that 1GB RAM, which the Redmi Go comes with, will not be enough for a phone to work smoothly and he wished the company should have incorporated 2GB RAM.

But, in my opinion, this a false apprehension among the public. Many lose sight of the fact the Redmi Go is running Google's official Android Go edition, which is specially developed to run phones with bare minimum hardware even with 512MB RAM and yet work flawlessly.

Android Go edition is fully optimised so that the phone consumes less power and it is very light in size but does not compromise in terms of performance.

It can also be noted that the Android team has improvised the preinstalled Google apps (for example Files Go, Google Go, Maps Go and YouTube Go, among others) to take up 50% less space, making sure that low-end smartphone users get more space for music, apps, photos and other activities.

Rest assured, the Redmi Go will not disappoint the consumer, which I believe will appeal to those planning to buy their first-ever smartphone.

For the uninitiated, the Redmi Go sports a 5.0-inch HD screen and comes with sturdy polycarbonate shell on the back.

Under-the-hood, it houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad-core chipset, 1GB RAM, 8 GB storage (expandable via microSD) and a 3,000mAh battery, which is enough for the device to run for a whole day under mixed usage.

As far as the photography hardware is concerned, the Redmi Go features an 8MP primary camera with F.20 aperture with LED flash on the back and a 5MP selfie snapper on the front.

It can be noted that Redmi Go will come with a dedicated microSD card slot, meaning device owners need not have to compromise second SIM slot for extra storage. They can have two SIMs and also be expand the mobile's storage up to 128GB.

The notable aspect of the new Redmi Go is it runs Google's special Android Oreo 8.1 Go edition. Though it is one generation old OS, it will still be good enough for the phone to perform normal day-to-day tasks.

Key specifications of Xiaomi Redmi Go: