Xiaomi Unveils Smart IRCTC SMS Feature That's Coming Soon to MIUI

Xiaomi at an event on Monday launched its newest budget smartphone, the Redmi 4A, which is touted as a revamp of the popular Redmi 1S. Apart from the new design and bumped up specifications, Xiaomi at the Redmi 4A launch event revealed that its phones in India will soon get a new smart SMS feature, specifically for IRCTC bookings, with an update to its MIUI custom Android ROM.

The company said that IRCTC messages are quite popular in country. Normally, the confirmation message is in the form of a standard text message which mentions the PNR, train number, time of departure and destination. The new version of MIUI will instead display the message in a neat ticket-like format as shown in the image above. The redesigned IRCTC message feature will not immediately be available, but the company promises that it will come soon to MIUI, which likely means that other Xiaomi smartphones on MIUI 8 and above will also get the new SMS feature.

Apart from the launch of the Redmi 4A, the company reaffirmed its commitment to 'Make in India' by announcing a second manufacturing plant in partnership with Foxconn at Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. Once the new plant opens, Xiaomi says that with the combined capacity it aims to manufacture one phone per second during operational hours, and that more that 95 percent of its smartphones sold in India will be manufactured locally.

Additionally, Xiaomi also took the time to reveal that the company currently hold the top spot in online sales, with one in every three phones sold online being a Mi phone. The company is also the second largest brand in India with an overall 10.2 percent market share.

The Xiaomi Redmi 4A has been launched in India at a price of Rs. 5,999 and supports 4G VoLTE networks. The smartphone sports a 5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) display, and is powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core Snapdragon 425 SoC coupled with the Adreno 308 GPU and 2GB of RAM. It features a polycarbonate body with hybrid dual-SIM card slot, and runs MIUI 8 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

The smartphone bears a 13-megapixel sensor with PDAF, a 5-lens system, an f/2.2 aperture, and is backed by a LED flash, while the front gets a 5-megapixel sensor with an f/2.2 aperture. The Redmi 4A comes with 16GB of inbuilt storage that is expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB).

The Xiaomi Redmi 4A in Dark Grey and Gold colour options will be available on Amazon India and Mi.com starting 12pm IST, Thursday. Meanwhile, the new Rose Gold colour variant will go on sale on April 6 exclusively on Mi.com.