Moto E3 Power vs Xiaomi Redmi 3S: Battle of the budget smartphones

Motorola launched its Moto e3 Power smartphone today, and it is priced at Rs 7,999. The phone adds to the growing list of smartphones in the budget segment. Phones like the Xiaomi Redmi 3S and Redmi 3S Prime along with Lenovo Vibe K5 and Coolpad Note 3 Lite are some of the popular phones in this segment.

Budget smartphones today seldom lack in features that comes in phones with a much higher price tag. It is quite common for sub-Rs 10,000 smartphones to have features like fingerprint scanners, good cameras and good battery life. And the Moto E series set the trend for getting specifications and features right in the budget category in India. Let’s now compare the new Moto e3 Power with the Xiaomi Redmi 3S, which costs Rs 1000 less.

The newly launched Moto e3 Power features a design carried forward from the Moto G4 and the G4 Plus. It features a 5-inch IPS LCD display with a 1280x720p resolution. The phone is powered by a MediaTek 6735P processor clocked at 1.0 Ghz. It comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage (expandable to 32GB). Moto e3 Power also has a water-repellant nano-coating.

Moto e3 Power comes with an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front shooter. The camera of the phone supports features like panorama, HDR and geo-tagging. The phone will be running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It comes with a 3500 mAh non-removable Li-ion battery.

This is dual SIM smartphone, which is 4G VoLTE ready and will work with Reliance Jio’s SIM. Motorola Moto e3 Power supports 4G SIM in one slot and a 3G SIM in the other, and there’s a separate microSD card slot. The company has not gone for a hybrid slot like Xiaomi.

Xiaomi Redmi 3S comes with a 5-inch (1280x720p) display, and is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor with an Adreno 505 GPU. It comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage (expandable to 256GB via microSD). The phone weighs 144 gms and has support for dual SIM.

The Redmi 3S features a 13MP rear camera with a f/2.0 aperture with a phase detection autofocus. The front camera on the device is a 5MP shooter with a f/2.2 aperture. Both cameras can capture video at 1080p. The phone is backed by a massive 4100 mAh battery with fast charging capability. It is priced at Rs 6,999 for the 16GB storage version, while the 3GB RAM 32 GB storage version has a fingerprint scanner as well and cost Rs 8,999.

The high point of the Redmi 3S is the battery which easily lasts two days with moderate to heavy usage as we saw during the course of review.

Right now the budget Redmi 3S has a price advantage compared to the Moto e3 Power, but it should be noted that Motorola is offering a stock Android experience with this phone, which is much better and smoother than Xiaomi’s MIUI.