China's Xiaomi launches its lowest-priced smartphone, the $130 Red Rice

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is in the news again. The company has now collaborated with Chinese Internet giant Tencent to launch a new Red Rice phone. The new phone, which will be the lowest-priced in its range, was unveiled today at a joint announcement. The Chinese smartphone maker is known for coming up with phones that have great features in an affordable price range.

The company announced the launch on its official Sina Weibo account in collaboration with Qzone, a social networking website operating by Tencent, and Telecoms provider China Mobile. The phone will be retailing at $130 (Rs 7,920 approx) and is available for pre-order on Qzone from today. The phone will hit stores from August 12 onwards. It should be noted that the Red Rice smartphone is currently available only in certain Asian markets, and India has not been included in that list yet.

The Red Rice phone will exclusively debut on Qzone first, providing it the lion’s share of the 100,000 Red Rice phones being pushed out in the first batch. The exclusive debut could be a move to push more traffic to the social networking website, as Xiaomi’s phones have a good track record of generating hype and selling out fast, according to TNW.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has launched its new Red Rice phone (Image credit: Weibo)

The specifications of the smartphone have also been announced. The Red Rice phone will sport a 4.7-inch screen that comes with a resolution of 1280 x 720. Internally the smartphone comes with a 1.5GHz MT6589T quad-core processor. The Red Rice phone operates on Version 5 of Xiaomi’s own highly customisable Android-based MIUI firmware. Added to the package is an 8 megapixel rear camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-shooter, with dual-SIM capabilities also thrown in. The company has strapped 1GB of RAM to the phone as well as 4GB of internal storage, which can be expanded via a microSD slot.

Earlier reports indicate that Xiaomi is planning to get its new flagship phone, dubbed mi3, onto shelves in August. The phone will reportedly come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor that clocks at a staggering 2.1GHz. The leaked AnTuTu benchmark scores increase the shock factor, as the mi3 scores a massive 84,262 point score. In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S4 scores a relatively meagre score of 28,980 points. With a range of phones that pack great features with a fiercely competitive pricing, it definitely looks like Xiaomi is making a lot of good moves to ensure its popularity in Asian markets.