Like Xiaomi, Redmi might also choose the path of giving users the option to have the charger or give it up.
The first to do so was Apple, the second Samsung and the third Xiaomi. Now it looks like Redmi is also about to join the ranks of smartphone manufacturers who are deciding to say goodbye to the in-pack charger on their 2021 smartphones. Like the parent company Xiaomi, in fact, Redmi could offer its users the possibility to choose, for the same price, whether to have or not the charger.
The new policy should start from the K40, the next top of the range of Redmi derived from the new Xiaomi Mi 11, recently shown to the public. A picture published on the chinese social network Weiboo suggests that Redmi is willing to let its users choose if they want to have the charger or not: it's the K40 packaging. Or rather the packaging: there are two, one bigger and one smaller. The first one would contain the USB charger, the second one would not. This would be a less direct route than the one taken by Apple and Samsung, who removed the charger from the iPhone 12 and Galaxy S21 packages without giving users a choice of what they prefer.
Charger yes, charger no
When Apple announced the iPhone 12 without the charger in the box, officially for environmental reasons, it attracted a lot of criticism: for many people the idea of paying over a thousand euros for a smartphone and not even having the charger is unacceptable.
Initially Samsung criticized this choice, and even made fun of it, but then changed its mind and presented the Galaxy S21 without charger. As soon as the new Chinese flagship will have sold enough units, it will be possible to make a meaningful statistic on how many users have chosen to renounce to the charger.
The statistic, it seems, will also involve the users of the cheap brand of the group, namely Redmi, which will have to make the same choice. It must be said, however, that in the case of both Xiaomi/Redmi and Apple and Samsung, the charger you can or must give up is not high-speed, but a very normal low-powered power supply.
Redmi K40 and K40 Pro, what do we know
Charger aside, the packaging leak is just the latest of the rumors about the new Redmi K40 and K40 Pro smartphones. The latter is supposed to be the twin, or almost, of the Xiaomi Mi 11 while the former is expected to have lower specs.
Instead of the Snapdragon 888 SoC of the K40 Pro and Mi 11, in fact, it should have the Snapdragon 775G, a chipset yet to be announced by Qualcomm that could debut right on the next Redmi smartphone. It would be a 6nm SoC (versus the 888's 5nm), an evolution of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G.