Nokia 5.3 vs Redmi 9 by Xiaomi - Affordable Android Comparison By Tech Travel Geeks

Hello, I'm Mateo the chief mobile opinions here at the tech travel geeks, and this is the tech travel geek, side-by-side comparison of the Nokia 5.3 smartphone and the Redmi 9 smartphones, both excellent value devices released in 2020. If you don't already, please do subscribe to the tech travel gates here on YouTube right. Then these two devices, the Nokia 5.3 and Redmi 9, are two of the most affordable and best value for money. Devices released in 2020, both retail for between 100 and 150 pounds sterling and both of them deliver a lot of bang for buck. Let's start with the Nokia 5.3, this has been a very popular device on the tech, travel geeks, YouTube channel. We reviewed it and have completed our full long term review on the channel and overall, it's a great value for money device with a nice big, big 6.5 inch display and decent performance and battery life. Really it's everything most people need from a smartphone, the Xiaomi Redmi.

Nine is a more recent device. We got. It is a slightly newer device and offers a different mix of features and services, but overall, on paper offers a bit more. The display is, in this case same size. It's a 6.5 inch display, but it does offer a full high definition display, whereas the Nokia 5.3 is a 720 or a standard HD plus display both devices have 19.5 to 9 or 20 to 9 aspect ratios. That means that they're longer than they are wider, and it's really quite good.

The bezels are pretty much minimal the place that they both have. A very big similarity is those selfie camera notches you'll, see that at the top there's a sort of nipple notch or teardrop notch for the device and that's how they get as much screen to body ratio. The two devices are pretty much unapologetically plastic they're, both plastic in both the frame and the backing where the Nokia 5.3 has an obvious difference between the frame itself and the back. The Redmi 9 seems to work with a single piece of plastic to cover the whole back and sides, so the frame to the phone is under there. The Nokia 5.3 has a more sort of glossy, but not properly glossy finish in the plastic, and it is quite a fingerprint magnet. As a result, you can see that in the reflection of light here, whilst it doesn't reflect as much as say the honor 9x light or the honor 20, it does leave a bit of a fingerprint mark on it, whereas the Redmi 9 has a nicely textured concentric plastic design around the camera module circle so where the circle around the camera is similar in material to the one you see on the Nokia 5.3 on the full back on the Redmi nine. It's only around that circle around the camera and there's a nice concentric circle, design that expands along the device.

In a way, this design reminds us of the shape and the camera module in the Poco f2 pro and even way back to the Huawei Mate 30 pro. So just a thought. There that's a design thing, and it is noticeable when you're holding it. The Nokia 5.3 is slightly slipper. Some people do enjoy that, but that's a personal preference.

If much prefer the Redmi nines finish in this case, and most people, as we advise here in the tech travel gauge, should probably be using a case so that difference won't be as noticeable. Now we mentioned those lovely screens they're different resolutions. There are different chipsets in the background powering the devices, so performance is really not that noticeable. So the Nokia 5.3 is running on a snapdragon chipset, a Qualcomm snapdragon chipset. In this case it is the snapdragon 665 which is an outscore processor with an arena chipset, but it is a lower resolution screen, so that doesn't need as much processing power or as much graphics, processing power to drive the screen prism.

The Redmi 9 is using a slightly less efficient, MediaTek, hello g80 chipset and that full high definition chip really does need the Mali g52 to drive the screen to most users, there's no real difference in the performance of the devices side by side. What I will say is that in day-to-day use my experience has been slightly smoother and more pleasant on the mini powered Redmi. As in, I prefer the experience in the Redmi just because of the way that Xiaomi have set it up, it is a nice clean experience. It's based on android 10, so you get features like dark mode, and it works really, really well. It has more than just the basics that you get in android one on the Nokia.

Obviously, it depends on how you'll be using your smartphone, what you'll be using it for, but I would say that overall, you have a more refined experience with mini on android 10 and that has been refined to a point where I think it actually adds value compared to stock android or the android one experience that you find in the Nokia 5.3, that's just a personal preference of mine, but if you're thinking of buying this for a person who's not really a techie who doesn't want to delve into the settings too often, maybe the Nokia 5.3 is a better purchase choice for them. So we've talked about the chipset, the display, the performance, in my experience on both devices perfect, overall experience for all the basics both can handle gaming, including games like Call of Duty, mobile and goat simulator and League of Legends really, really well. It's astonishing that these devices price that between 100 and 150 pounds, can do so well, one of the spaces. There's a key difference is that obviously the Nokia 5.3 is a Google android one device, which means that Nokia worked very closely with Google in getting timely software updates and security patches to their devices at time of recording this video in late september 2020 both are still on android 10, but I imagine that the Nokia 5.3 will get the update to android 11 much faster, because it's an android one device, but then again, Xiaomi have been very good at software updates. In recent years.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Redmi 9 do very well going forward now in terms of positioning of buttons and so forth. There's one key difference. I wanted to highlight. The Nokia 5.3 has a volume, rocker and power button on the right, and so does the Redmi 9. The main difference here is that the power button on the Nokia 5.3 is a really cool power button that has a LED built in, so this is your notification led when you're using the device so say, you've put the device down it's off, and you get an incoming text message or instant message. You'll see that flashing in on the side, because it's your notification led the Redmi 9 does not have that feature.

If you're in a position where you may not be able to hear your phone, or you may have to have it on silent, that's a good way to have your phone face down on a surface or on a piece of cloth or whatever, but still be able to see. When you have a notification, the Redmi nine doesn't have that and on the other side, you'll notice that they both have a sim tray there for sim cards and memory cards both have expandable memory with micro SD cards. There is an extra button here because being close partnership with Google Nokia have put the Google Assistant button on the device the Redmi 9 doesn't have that now. That's the key difference of the two devices in terms of buttons in terms of feel the Redmi 9 is significantly heavier. The Nokia 5.3 has a really nice overall feel in the hand it doesn't have the heft that the Redmi 9 has, and that's because underneath these plastic backs that we discussed earlier, the Nokia 5.3 has a 4 000 William hour battery, which is decent. It's a big battery that battery charges with 10 watt charging.

So it's not the fastest charging. It can take between two and five hours to completely charge the battery from flat, whereas the Redmi 9 has that extra heft and weight because it has a 520 William hour battery. So that is a significant difference in the battery size and as well as that pairing it with android 10 and the latest version of mini. In this case, mew 11, soon to be 12. The battery life on the Redmi 9 is significantly better, and really it does make a difference.

So does the fact that the Redmi 9 has fast charging, there's 18 watt fast charging, so even if you do go down to flat or close to it, you can top up much faster than you would on the Nokia 5.3 and, in my experience that's a more useful feature now at the top of the device. The Nokia 5.3 has a courage board. That's a 3.5 millimeter audio jack, which is great. It's something that we really welcome and a microphone hole beside it, whereas the Redmi 9 has a microphone hole and, more importantly, it has an infrared blaster. That is so that you can use your phone as a remote control if you've lost the remote control, or you're somewhere, where you may not want to use it, such as hotel rooms.

So that's a really nice feature that I think is still valid today. It's a very useful feature. The Redmi 9 has its courage, port or 3.5 millimeter audio jack at the bottom of the device. So it's not missing that it's just positioned very differently in the phone it's at the bottom ergonomically. I do prefer the positioning of the carriage port at the bottom of the device as well as that at the bottom.

You have the USB type-c port for data and charging and a single firing speaker, whereas with the Nokia 5.3, you have obviously your usual microphone hole, single speaker at the bottom and your port for charging and data, so very similar there, just the positioning of that 3.5 millimeter audio jackets there. So in terms of other features and services, there are different options for both devices in regard to storage and ram. Both these devices are ones that I've bought for personal use. So though, I opted for the versions with four gigabytes of ram, I wasn't too bothered by the storage because it's expandable in both devices with micro SD cards, but with the Nokia 5.3. I opted for the four gigabyte ram and 64 gigabytes storage version, which, for my use, is more than enough, whereas on the Redmi nine at the same price point more or less just a few months later, you get a significantly different offering so in the Redmi 9 I got for 130 pounds on Amazon.

I have four gigabytes of ram and 128 gigabytes of storage, plus the expandability with memory, so value for money, you're, definitely getting more in terms of storage from the Redmi 9 in this space. So what else shall we look at? Let's finish off with the cameras now I haven't finished, reviewing the Redmi 9 and putting it through its paces as far as cameras are concerned, but it is really important to look at these two devices and their cameras, because one of the key selling points for both devices is the fact that they have four cameras on the back. That's amazing on paper, and I will highlight the fact that this is on paper, because both devices have main 13 megapixel sensors, both the Nokia 5.3 and the Redmi nine. Now the Redmi 9 has a slightly better one. It performs better in low light.

In my experience, it performs better in good lighting conditions, just in general, the Redmi 9's main 13 megapixel sensor in my experience, so far performs better than the Nokia 5.3, but on paper it looks as if the Nokia 5.3 has a better main sensor at the back. Now they both also have ultra-wide sensors and lenses. This is really cool new feature. It's amazing to see it in devices between the hundred and a hundred and fifty-five pound price range. That means that the Nokia 5.3 has a 5 megapixel ultra-wide sensor, which is decent enough. The Redmi 9 has an 8 megapixel, one which again, in my experience, provides a much better type of picture now again we're looking at devices in the 100-150 pound price range.

They both have two megapixel depth: sensors that the software on both camera devices will use to handle depth perception. So that means that your portrait pictures will be better. Autofocus works better, but don't expect much of that extra camera, as I would say, completely ignore the two macro cameras that are built in and are here just to make it look good on paper. In my experience, they're pretty pointless so, whereas, on the Nokia 5.3, you have a 2 megapixel macro camera, which is pretty pointless on the Redmi 9, you have a 5, megapixel micro camera, just don't use them use the main sensor get up close to your subject. The autofocus will do the rest, don't bother using those.

I'm really disappointed that phone manufacturers have got into this arms race of having to have a certain number of cameras when some of them are pretty much unusable. It's just to be able to be seen holding this device up to your head and to have those four cameras visible. It means that you have a good smartphone in some places and the same with the Nokia. Furthermore, it's just very, very disappointed when they're actually used. So that's the key differences in the camera department and similarities.

The selfie cameras, both in those teardrop notches, I would say, are really quite good for the price range you're getting a lot of camerae. Both are 8 megapixel sensors, both of them perform well in most conditions, but suffer a little in low light, and both of them are capable of recording video in full high definition at 1080p, so you'd be able to see the full output of that video on the Redmi 9. You wouldn't be able to see that on the Nokia 5.3 and one last thing both these devices have NFC. Both these devices have Google Play Services. You can use these devices for not only paying but accessing the Google Play Store, they're unaffected by trade wars, so that I think pretty much sums up the differences and similarities between the Redmi 9 and the Nokia 5.3. I'm actually going to call this one.

If you disagree with me, if you don't think I'm right, let us know in the comments why you don't think that's the case. Let us know what you think about the comparison between these two devices in the comments, but I think that value for money at the moment considering them equal, because once you get network subsidies, discounts, etc. , I think they're pretty much the same price here in the UK. The Redmi 9 is my choice. I think it's a much better value for money device.

It offers a better battery life faster charging, better overall cameras, it's just overall, a better device. In my opinion, the Nokia 5.3 is a great device. It's simple, it might be the sort of device you'll get if you're, not a techie or cameras are not important to you, and you don't spend a lot of time out and about without access to a charger, and you charge your phone overnight. Both are amazing, smartphones, we're at a great point in technology where smartphones in this price range between 100 and 150 pounds offer so much value. But for this video I think that's a conclusion.

We've compared them side to my side. I've, given you my opinion as chief mobile opinions here at the tech travel gates. So thanks for watching, as I said earlier, if you disagree with me, or you would like to give us some feedback, if you have any further questions, just ask us in the comments. If you don't already, please do subscribe to the tech travel geeks here on YouTube. Thank you for watching, and we will speak to you soon.

Source : Tech Travel Geeks