At an event in Delhi today, Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 4 in India. The handset is the successor to the popular Redmi Note 3 and improves upon it in many key aspects.

While the Redmi Note 4 continues to feature a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD display, its unibody aluminium body has now received a huge upgrade. The handset now features a new design with tapered 5mm edges that make it look and feel slimmer and more premium than its predecessor. The antenna lines have also been replaced with anodised high gloss aluminium which along with the lack of a rear speaker grille gives the rear of the handset a cleaner look. The speaker now resides at the bottom.

The display is now laminated to the 2.5D cover glass, and Xiaomi says that it is now calibrating the display panel for improved accuracy.

Under the hood, the Redmi Note 4 packs a Snapdragon 625 chipset, an octa-core chip A53 chip clocked at 2GHz, and an Adreno 506 GPU. While slower than the Snapdragon 650 chipset found inside the Redmi Note 3, it is more power efficient. Combined with the 4100mAh battery, this translates into the Redmi Note 4 easily offering two-day battery life. Xiaomi says that in its tests the Redmi Note 4 offers up to 25 percent longer battery life than the Redmi Note 3. The improved thermal performance also ensures that the Redmi Note 4 is able to play heavy games for a long period of time without any heating issues.

Other specs of the handset include Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, 3.5mm jack, LTE support, hybrid dual-SIM, Infrared sensor, VoLTE, microSD card slot, and a microUSB port. As for the camera, the rear 13MP f/2.0 BSI sensor has been sourced from Sony and it now features larger 1.12um pixels and PDAF. The samples images shown by Xiaomi at the event suggest that the camera performance of the Redmi Note 4 is vastly improved to that of the Redmi Note 3. There is also a 5MP f/2.0 selfie shooter at the front.

On the software front, the Redmi Note 4 runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with MIUI 8 on top of it. Xiaomi will also be offering a preview build of MIUI based on Android 7.0 Nougat for the handset.

Xiaomi will be launching the Redmi Note 4 in three variants with different RAM and storage configurations: 2GB RAM and 32GB storage; 3GB RAM and 32GB storage, and 4GB RAM with 64GB storage. The variants are priced at Rs 9,999, Rs 10,999, and Rs 12,999, respectively. It will go on sale on January 23rd on Flipkart and Mi.com and will be available in Dark Grey, Gold, and Black colors. The black variant will launch later this year though.