Xiaomi unveils Redmi 2, a colorful update to its best-selling phone

Xiaomi sold 61.1 million smartphones in 2014, the company revealed yesterday. At the same time, the upstart Chinese phone maker unveiled the Redmi 2, the next-gen version of its best-selling budget phone.

As with the original Redmi, the new Redmi 2 costs just US$110 (RMB 699 in China) and packs some pretty strong specifications for the price. Unlike the grey and blocky original, the Redmi 2 is colorful and, er…, blocky. The design is still very bland, but the colorful rears – in a choice of black, white, or pastel hues of green, yellow, or pink – liven up the phone. Here are the specs:

• 4.7-inch, 720p HD display
• 8MP back camera and 5MP front camera
• Quad-core, 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor
• 2,200mAh battery
• Dual-SIM 4G support
• Weighs 133g
• MIUI 6 skin on top of Android 4.4

Back in July last year, Xiaomi revealed that the budget-oriented Redmi series of phones (which includes the bigger Redmi Note) made up 38 percent of sales from mid-2011 to mid-2014 and outsell the flagship Xiaomi phones that cost US$320.

Redmi 2 sales start in mainland China on January 9, but there are no set dates for other countries where Xiaomi operates.

When the Redmi 2 hits countries like Indonesia and India, it’ll be met with much stronger local competition from homegrown brands than the company saw last year. In India, Micromax recently started a Redmi-esque budget series called Yureka that packs even stronger specs at a similar price.

See: Xiaomi confirms $1.1 billion funding, now valued at $45 billion