The review was a good experience for me, too, as I usually spend time with a costly device sitting on top of the food chain, but Redmi 9C is surprisingly good for an average user as a day-to-day phone. As expected the phone was sometimes a bit laggy, but considering it costs 1/10th of a high end phone, the overall user experience was still impressive. 

Package

Redmi 9C comes in a nicely packed box, and we tested the Redmi 9C Sunrise Orange version of the phone with 2GB RAM and 32GB ROM. A version with 64GB ROM is slightly more expensive, and it is worth considering.

The box includes a sim tray remover, Xiaomi MDY-09-EW 10W charger (5V 2A), that looks like a slightly thicker version of the iPhone 8 charger. The box includes USB Type-A to Micro USB cable, a warranty card, and a brief manual. We learned that this is standard for most phones these days, even in this market segment, but we did miss seeing earbuds included in the package.

Redmi 9C is a rather large phone with a big 6.53-inch screen. It measures 164.9 x 77 x 9 mm (6.49 x 3.03 x 0.35 in) and weighs 196 g (6.91 oz). The 6.53-inch screen is based on IPS LCD technology and 1600x720 pixel resolution in a 20:9 aspect ratio.

The phone ships with MIUI 12 and Android 10 operating system out of the box. MediaTek G35 SoC powers the Redmi 9C phone. The Octa-core G35 comes with 4x2.3 GHz Cortex-A53 and 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 cores. The 32GB storage version comes with 2GB RAM while the 64GB storage version comes with 3GB RAM and eMMC 5.1 storage.

MediaTek G35 features PowerVR GE8320 GPU that will be enough for good video playback and entry-level gaming.

The rear camera has four lenses and 13 MP, f/2.2, 28mm (wide), 1.0µm, PDAF, 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro), 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth), LED Flash, and HDR support. The maximum supported video format stops at 1080p@30FPS.

The selfie camera supports the same 1080p@30FPS and 5 MP still images, f/2.2, (wide), 1.12µm. It works just fine.