Yesterday, as part of its 5th year anniversary, Xiaomi unveiled its most budget handset to date, the Redmi 2A. Pricing it at the equivalent of $97 USD, the company swapped the quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 410 SoC found on the Xiaomi Redmi 2 with a quad-core 1.5 GHz Leadcore LC1860 chipset. That means a new GPU, of course, and thus the Adreno 306 GPU is out, and the Mail T622 MP2 GPU is in.
The rest of the specs include a 4.7-inch glass carrying resolution of 720 x 1280, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of native storage, and dual SIM slots all powered by a 2200mAh battery. The rear camera weighs in at 8MP and a 2MP snapper adorns the front. Android 4.4.4 is pre-installed with MIUI 6 running on top.
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Sounds about right for a sub-$100 smartphone from a leading manufacturer, but the sticking point for you might be this relatively obscure Leadcore processor barely anybody outside of China has heard about. Well, Xiaomi has had a strategic partnership with Leadcore for a while, and last year there were rumors it will launch an incredibly budget-friendly handset with 4G connectivity, powered by a Leadcore chipset, and all of this materialized to the letter with the Redmi 2A.
The LC1860 processor has four Cortex-A7 cores, clocked at 1.5 GHz maximums, and one auxiliary core for the mundane tasks, coupled with a dual-core ARM Mali-T622 graphics processing unit. This Leadcore silicon has now been benchmarked, and the results are pretty svelte for the phone's price point. The Redmi 2A scored more than 23, 000 points on AnTuTu, while the Snapdragon 410-powered Redmi 2 barely crosses the 20, 000 mark.
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There is more to a chipset than synthetic benchmark scores, but still, this AnTuTu result goes to show that you won't feel underpowered with the Redmi 2A, especially at that price point, which was a reason for worry when we heard the somewhat unknown processor brand that powers it.
Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena from 2010 to 2025, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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