Contrary to earlier reports that the Chinese company will launch a new affordable handset on April 8, Xiaomi has come out and taken the wraps off of the device already at an event in China on March 31.

Company CEO Lei Jun took center stage to unveil the company's all new budget offering: the Redmi 2A.

Now we were expecting an ultra-affordable handset, for reports doing rounds were indicative of the same. However, as things stand it's not all that ultra-affordable after all. In hindsight, the company has simply toned down the recently launched Redmi 2 as is also reflected by its naming.

So, instead of a CNY 499 price tag that we were expecting, the Xiaomi Redmi 2A has been priced at CNY 599. Now if you look closely, it's not a huge difference when you consider the Redmi 2's price. Just to break it down for you, while Redmi 2 retails at Rs 6,999 in India, the Redmi 2A has been priced at around Rs 6,044.

There is also no information when the device will be hitting global shores, including India since CEO Lei Jun mentioned nothing at all in relation to this.

Let's take a look at the Redmi 2A's specification sheet though. As mentioned earlier, it's simply a toned down Redmi 2. Therefore it retains a 4.7-inch HD display with a 1280x720 pixels resolution, 8GB internal memory, 2,200mAh battery, and 4G LTE support.

So what has changed, you ask? Unlike the Redmi 2, the Redmi 2A is powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core Leadcore LC1860C CPU coupled with Mali T628MP2 GPU and 1GB of RAM. The Redmi 2 on the other hand comes with a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 CPU with Adreno 306 GPU and 1GB of RAM.

The Redmi 2 also has another variant that comes with 2GB RAM keeping rest of the specifics constant, but is more like a limited edition device. 

- Manohar