Earlier this week, after Xiaomi launched it’s much awaited Redmi 3S and Redmi 3S Prime, the battle in sub-10,000 category has taken a new shape. Let’s compare the new device from Xiaomi to LYF’s Water 6. As of now, both the phones are available at Rs 8,999. While Redmi 3S Prime is available only through Flipkart’s flash sale system, the LYF Water 6 is available in your local stores.
Design
The Water 6 from LYF comes with a unibody design with gold metallic edges and textured back for enhanced grip. It sports a 5 inch (1280×720) IPS LCD display with Asahi Dragontrail Glass for protection and durability. Underneath the display lies 3 capacitive buttons namely Home, Back and Menu. Overall, the design language is pretty impressive but still falls shy of the beautiful Redmi 3S metalic unibody design.
The curved edges, in the Redmi 3S Prime, makes it even more comfortable to hold the device while media consumption as well as answering calls. Regarding the display, the phone also has a 5 inch 720p IPS screen. The back of the phone also sports a quick fingerprint scanner which is absent from its counterpart.
Camera
In the camera department, both the phones come with a 13 Megapixel rear-facing shooter and a 5 megapixel front camera. The camera on the Redmi 3S Prime comes with 5P Lens elements, PDAF technology for better focusing and an f/2.0 Aperture. The front camera though comes with an f/2.2 Aperture.
LYF’s Water 6, on the other hand, comes with a 6X Digital Zoom (Front and Rear) and can also record 720p videos at 15FPS.
Both the phones are capable of Full HD video recording (Front and Rear). On paper both the phones look equally promising, the actual performance may differ.
Memory
Both the Redmi 3S Prime and Water 6 comes with 32GB Internal storage but here Redmi 3S Prime wins again with a micro SD card slot that can hold a card up to 128GB. Redmi 3S Prime also boats one GB extra RAM with 3GB while the LYF Water 6 comes with only 2GB RAM. Redmi 3S Prime is a clear winner in this section.
Processor
Coming to the processor, the LYF Water 6 comes with a Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 MSM8916 Chipset clocked at 1.2 GHz with Adreno 306 (450 Mhz). Whereas, the Redmi 3S Prime rocks with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 64-bit octa-core processor clocked at 1.4 GHz and Adreno 505 GPU.
On top of it, Redmi 3S Prime again leads coming with the latest Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out-of-the box while the LYF Water 6 comes with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Apparent from the above specs, the Redmi 3S Prime definitely has an upper hand in this section with the new and better processor and latest Android version.
Connectivity and Battery
Both the phones have Dual SIM capabilities but Redmi 3S Prime has a Hybrid SIM slot which means you can either use one SIM and a micro SD card or one micro SIM and one Nano SIM. With the absence of expandable storage in LYF Water 6, there is no such issue, but you can only use 4G in one SIM at a time though both SIM slots are 4G enabled.
Regarding the battery, the LYF Water 6 sports a promising 2920 mAh Li-Ion polymer battery but it is nothing when compared to a massive 4100 mAh battery in Redmi 3S Prime.
Apart from this, both the phones have Bluetooth 4.1, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS connectivity, and a micro USB slot. While the Water 6 comes with VoLTE as well, Redmi 3S Prime supports USB OTG (On the Go). Furthermore, the Redmi 3S also comes with an Infrared blaster and a Fingerprint sensor at the back.
Wrapping up
Well, though LYF’s Water 6 is an excellent device for this price point, Redmi 3S Prime is a clear winner for us with its expandable storage capacity and better performance and battery. The inclusion of Fingerprint sensor is just icing on the cake for this beautifully designed handset from Xiaomi. Though you get 2 years manufacture warranty but considering LYF is a fairly new brand and comes, it would be wiser if you go for its more trusted counterpart brands such as Xiaomi in this case.