The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3G has been banned in India, but the company can still sell the Redmi Note 4G in the country. The device has the Snapdragon 400 SoC, which should give it better battery life, but lesser multi-tasking prowess. So, let's start the tale of two Redmi Notes.
AnTuTu Benchmark..
The benchmark score on AnTuTu is much lower for the Redmi Note 4G, but that wasn't visible in the initial few hours of testing the device.
3D Mark Ice Storm Extreme
We were a bit surprised to see better graphics performance scores on the Redmi Note 3G, but that's what our synthetic benchmark (3D Mark Ice Storm Extreme) seems to suggest.
Smartbench 2012
The Redmi Note 4G outshines its 3G counterpart on the Smartbench 2012 benchmark. This is most likely because the older benchmark is better suited to quad core devices (like the 4G version) than octa-core SoCs (like the 3G).
Battery
As predicted earlier, the Snapdragon 400 is much easier on the device's battery. The Redmi Note 4G went on for almost two hours more than the Redmi Note 3G on our video test. This is a promising result.
Operating System
The Redmi Note 4G thankfully runs on KitKat, unlike its 3G counterpart. This is a welcome addition, promising better memory management and hence good performance on regular activities. Of course, this changes the MiUI version name as well, even though both run on MiUI 5 only. There are some minor changes in the software features, but we'll tell you more about that after we've gone through the device with a fine toothed comb.
Display
While both the devices have a 5.5 inch 720p display, the Redmi Note 3G's display seems to be brighter than the 4G variant. We're not quite sure if this is a device issue, but we'll find out soon enough.