Redmi K40 launched in China with Snapdragon 870 SOC

Price starts at 1,999 Yuan ($310)

Release Date
February 25, 2021
Starting Price
1,999 Yuan ($310)

The day is finally here. Redmi dropped its K40 lineup today in the Chinese market and interestingly, it includes not two but three new phones named the K40, K40 Pro, and the K40 Pro Plus, with the pricing in the same order as well. In this article, we will talk about the cheapest one i.e, the vanilla Redmi K40 which, for a starting price of just 1,999 Yuan ($310), offers some really good hardware including a 120Hz E4 AMOLED panel, Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SOC, 33W Fast charging and more.

It is worth noting that this isn’t the first phone that launched with Snapdragon 870. That crown goes to the Motorola Edge S which launched last month in China for the same starting price of 1,999 Yuan!

Redmi K40

Speaking of the design first, it looks and feels premium, thanks to Gorilla Glass 5 on the front as well as on the rear. There is a flat display on the front with a hole-punch cutout in the middle and a rectangular camera module on the back that houses the triple camera setup in it. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack on this phone so the only port is the Type-C one on the bottom. Interestingly, despite the fact that there is an AMOLED screen, the fingerprint scanner is placed on the right side and doubles as the power button. Redmi probably did this to reduce the overall cost of the phone.

The display is definitely one of the biggest USPs of Redmi K40 since it is a 6.67-inch E4 AMOLED panel featuring Full-HD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and up to 360Hz touch-sampling rate. The peak brightness is 1,300 nits and the screen supports HDR10. Getting such a high-quality panel at this price is definitely impressive.

Under the hood, there is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SOC which is like a slightly upgraded version of the Snapdragon 865+ of last year. It is a 7nm chip featuring the Kryo 585 CPU clocked at up to 3.2GHz and the Adreno 350 GPU. This chip is paired with 6/8/12GB RAM LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB/256GB UFS 3.1 storage.

Redmi K40

On the rear, there are three cameras that include a primary 48 Megapixel shooter with a Sony IMX582 sensor, a secondary 8 Megapixel ultrawide camera, and a third 5 Megapixel macro camera. The rear camera can shoot up to 4K 30fps videos. On the front, Redmi K40 has a 20 Megapixel camera for selfies.

There is a 4,520mAh battery underneath and the phone supports 33W fast charging.

Finally, MIUI 12 based on Android 11 runs out of the box and there are Stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos. Thanks to Snapdragon 870, the phone supports 5G as well.

Redmi K40 comes in three colors – Black, White, and Gradient Blue. There are four storage options and here is the pricing for the Chinese market –

  • 6GB + 128GB – ¥1,999 ($310 | Rs 22,500)
  • 8GB + 128GB – ¥2,199 ($340 | Rs 25,000)
  • 8GB + 256GB – ¥2,499 ($387 | Rs 28,000)
  • 12GB + 256GB – ¥2,699 ($418 | Rs 30,000)