Its been a little over one year since Xiaomi officially entered the Kenyan smartphone space. The entry was quite low-key, with only two devices going on sale, the Redmi Note 2 and the Redmi 2 Pro. The Redmi Note 2 retailed at Ksh.21,000 and the Redmi 2 Pro retailed at Ksh.15,000, which to me was quite hefty considering how old the devices were, even at that time.
Well, its been a very quiet year for Xiaomi, with no new devices announced and we never saw the Mi5 officially launch in Kenya. Xiaomi’s dream of conquering the Kenyan market by offering “better quality devices at affordable prices” seemed to have faded away until now.
We have information that Xiaomi is in talks with Telkom Kenya, who are their carrier partner, to bring the Redmi 3S and Redmi 4A to the market. Both devices were released last year, with the Redmi 4A being much newer than the 3S.
The Redmi 3S comes with a 5.0-inch 720P display, 13MP camera (5MP front), 2GB RAM, Snapdragon 430 and a 4100mAh battery. The Redmi 4A also comes with 5.0-inch 720P display, same camera optics, same RAM, a slightly newer Snapdragon 435 processor and a smaller 3120mAh battery.
Both devices run MIUI 8 ontop of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, with no information on whether they will be upgraded to Android Nougat.
No information on when these devices will arrive, or how they will be priced but being a Xiaomi fan, I hope they don’t make the same mistakes they made last year.
PSA: Dear, Xiaomi, we like newer devices, at affordable prices. We would especially appreciate having your flagship devices available locally.
When asked about the availability of their new flagship, the Mi6, our source told us that they will have to wait for the international version to be released as the Chinese version does not support band 20, which Safaricom and Telkom Kenya 4G networks run on.
