Xiaomi Mi A1 — One of the Best Affordable Androids Around

Yes, you read that right. Mi A1  is the Android running handset and is probably not the last instance of Xiaomi’s collaboration with Google. The device looks and feels like Mi 5X, but it is slightly different from it. Outside of a different OS, Mi A1 is a little heftier and comes only in a single RAM version — 64GB. The start of sales is scheduled for September 12.

Like Mi 5X, the first pure Android smartphone from Xiaomi got a stylish 7.3mm slim body. You can have it in gold, rose gold and, obviously, black. The device uses a metal jacket with a thin sheet of pyrolytic graphite on the back, which is supposed to improve heat transfer and allow the device to work flawlessly under maximum load. The measurements are as following: 155.4×75.8×7.3mm. Its weight is 168 grams.

Mi A1 also has a 5.5-inch IPS screen with Full HD resolution that is protected with a 2.5D Gorilla Glass, a SoC Snapdragon 625 CPU, which is a mid-range chipset, but a great one for a 1080p phone. The processor features eight cores and is coupled with 4GB RAM and 64GB of flash memory. There is also a microSD slot that allows to expand the storage to 128GB more.

The main camera is a combination of a 12MP wide-angle lens with aperture f/2.2 and a 12MP telephoto lens with aperture f/2.6. You will also find a dual LED flash, a 2x optical zoom, s 10x digital zoom and a PDAF technology here as well. Mi A1 lets you shoot 4K video at 30fps and 720p at 120 fps.

Mi A1 uses dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, USB Type-C port, 3.5mm headphone jack and is embedded with a 3080mAh battery. At the presentation, Xiaomi also mentioned some improvements in the sound department that include an enhanced DHS Audio calibration algorithm and support of high-impedance headphones to name a few.

Mi A1 uses an untouched version of Android One. It runs Android 7.1.2 out of the box. It was reported that Mi A1 along with a bunch of other Mi gadgets should be updated to Android Oreo. It is also said that the upcoming Android P should land on the smartphone as well. Although Mi A1 has a clean Android, the smartphone will feature some of the applications from Xiaomi, for example, Mi Camera, Mi Remote and Mi Store. Mi A1 will also be protected from malware by regular security updates.