Couple of days back, Gionee announced two 4G enabled smartphones, V6L LTE, P5L LTE. It has also announced that all its phones, to be released in 2015 or after and will be priced above Rs 10,000, will come with 4G connectivity. Now another Chinese handset maker, Xiaomi is said to be making a 4G enabled smartphone which will be priced less than Rs 5,000.
According to a report of GizChina, the new phone will be powered by Leadcore LC1860 chipset, ARM Mali T628MP2 GPU and dual-channel 1GB LPDDR3 RAM. Most likely, it would run on Android KitKat operating system.
No other information about the phone is available right now but if indeed Xiaomi launches such a handset than it would bring a major upheaval in 4G smartphone market. Xiaomi already has a history of launching attractive smartphones at unbelievable price. Its Redmi 1S has achieved immense success in the sub-Rs 6,000 segment, while the Mi 3 is still one of the most sought after phone in the sub-Rs 20,000 segment.
However, one should note that cheap 4G phones arrival are being reported since a year back. Reliance Jio, which has pan-India 4G spectrum was earlier speculated to working on sub-Rs 10,000 4G devices. Many device makers infact might be just waiting for the full 4G network roll out to reveal their cards. Already there are several 4G enabled devices in the market; almost all top tier devices come with 4G compatibility. Wish, the telecom operators would show similar enthusiasm in launching 4G network.