Today, Xiaomi held a new product launch conference in Beijing, and officially released its first independent Redmi brand smartphone – Redmi Note 7, and also announced there will be another model using Sony’s 48MP lens instead of Samsung GM1. Lei Jun also said through his Weibo channel that he has confidence in the quality of this phone (codenamed ‘Little King Kong’), that’s why they have decided to break the industry’s 12-month warranty and take the lead in starting the 18-month warranty. This will be really beneficial for all consumers. Some users asked whether the Note 7 is the top model of Redmi. Lei Jun replied that there will be a Snapdragon 855 flagship designed by Redmi.

At the conference, Lei Jun once again pointed out that Redmi brand was formerly the Redmi smartphone product series. As of the third quarter of 2018, there were 278 million units sold worldwide. Currently, the e-commerce market continues to focus on creating national flagships, so Redmi will. It should be extremely cost-effective and super-high quality.

At the same time, Lei Jun announced that Lu Weibing, the former president of Gionee Group, who has recently joined Xiaomi, will serve as vice president of Xiaomi Group and general manager of Redmi brand. Seems this has been planned long ago because Lei June said that he had already talked with Lu Weibing two years ago, and he shut down his own startup company to join Xiaomi. Lu Weibing has 20 years of experience in the smartphone industry. He was responsible for Gionee’s overseas business and has extensive experience in smartphone products development, overseas trading, and supply chain management.

With the announcement of the Redmi independent brand, Xiaomi group starts the double-brand era of Mi + Redmi. These two brands will not only compete with other brands but with each other as well. So the upcoming Snapdragon 855-powered Redmi flagship will compete with the annual Mi line models. It’s assumed the SND855 Redmi phone will cost at 2500 yuan ($368).

At present, the only Xiaomi smartphone packed with the Snapdragon 855 that is in works is the Mi MIX 3 5G version. This handset first appeared at the 2018 China Mobile Partner Conference. Xiaomi official said that as the industry’s first 5G smartphone, the Mi MIX 3 5G version will use Qualcomm’s new generation flagship mobile platform Snapdragon 855. It comes with the X50 5G modem, combined with Xiaomi smart antenna switching technology. The download speed can be up to 2Gbps.