Xiaomi announced it is cancelling its March 12 launch event that was supposed to mark the official revelation of the Redmi Note 9 smartphone in India. The company said the looming threat of coronavirus forced them to cancel the event even though they had been planning for the launch for months now.
Announcing the cancellation, Manu Kumar Jain, the Managing Director of Xiaomi stated in a Twitter message they had no other option but to cancel the event to prevent their staff, Mi fans or media persons from running any risk of contracting the virus. The event will henceforth be an online-only affair with Manu promising it is still going to be note-worthy event though.
This also isn’t the first event that got cancelled owing to the coronavirus scare. We have earlier seen the Mobile World Congress event itself getting cancelled earlier this year. That was when the outbreak was still fresh, and dozens of cases were reported almost on a daily basis. Worth mentioning, MWC is the biggest event on earth dealing with mobile devices.
A lot of manufacturers were also scheduled to launch their latest flagships during the MWC. Those have either been deferred or companies are taking the virtual route to launching their phones with the event being streamed across the world.
Sony has already launched its latest flagship, the Xperia 1 II in an online-only global launch event and is already among the most discussed phones the world over. LG too was speculated to launch its G9 ThinQ at the MWC but is yet to announce when it plans to introduce the phone eventually.
As for the Note 9, its speculated to come with a Snapdragon 675 chipset, 4 GB of RAM, a 6.4-inch zero-bezel display, a 4100 mAh battery along with dual SIM support. The other highlight of the phone is going to be its quad camera setup comprising of a 48-, 8-, and two 2 mp sensors each. The phone will also come with a pop-up arrangement to house a 13 mp selfie cam.
