Xiaomi and Huawei's war means better cheap phones for everyone

Redmi and Honor both sell phones on Amazon

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Redmi Note 7 and Honor 10 Lite both have the “water-droplet” notch. (Picture: Redmi and Honor)

Xinmei Shen

Published: 9:54pm, 11 Jan 2019Updated: 8:50am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

If you thought the battle for high-end phones was brutal, wait until you see what's happening at the low-end.

Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun's message to Huawei sums it up quite well: "Don't mind life and death, come at us if you can."

He flashed the message on screen during a launch event for a Redmi phone yesterday. It's the first Redmi phone since Xiaomi spun it off as a separate brand focusing on cheaper phones -- aiming directly at Honor, a sub-brand of Huawei.

Xiaomi's CEO claims they're the real leader in value-for-money phones, and claims Honor just picks fights. "We don't start wars, but we're not afraid of wars," he said.

The good news, aside from entertaining quotes? There are plenty of cheap phones with pretty decent specs... and they could be available in the US.

The new phone introduced, the Redmi Note 7, has a 48 megapixel rear camera and a mid-range Snapdragon 660 chipset for just US$145. The Honor 10 Lite, dissed by Lei Jun at the event, costs just over US$200 -- but comes with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a selfie camera that even the Xiaomi CEO conceded was better than the one on the Redmi Note 7.

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Xiaomi and Huawei's war means better cheap phones for everyone

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Redmi and Honor both sell phones on Amazon

Redmi and Honor both sell phones on Amazon