Xiaomi Mi A1 Review: This Android One device is a killer budget phone
Limited specs don’t feel so limited
Inside, Xiaomi didn’t equip the Mi A1 with eye-popping specs, but they get the job done. The Snapdragon 625 processor and 4GB of RAM make the most of Android One and deliver a snappy experience. It might not boast the latest processor from Qualcomm, but its performance doesn’t suffer from it.
Navigating through apps and the home screen is buttery smooth. There are no stutters or hiccups you may fear with a budget phone.
The 5.5-inch 1080p LCD display looks stunning. It’s not something many other budget phones can brag about, but the Mi A1 can and does. Watching YouTube or Netflix on this screen is a great experience. Colors pop and there is plenty of detail to display on the high-res panel.
Powering all of this is a 3,080mAh battery that will last you all day. Google configured Android One to work as fast as possible while taking up as few resources as possible. That means the battery will last you all day, easily. I used it for watching video, scrolling through social media and looking up articles. Not the heaviest of use, but it lasted me through the day with plenty of power to spare.
Where Xiaomi did reach a little too far and fell short was with the 12MP dual camera. The dual wide-angle and telephoto lens system tries hard to mimic the iPhone’s camera down to the way its software looks, but Xiaomi’s software and hardware doesn’t match Apple’s implementation. The photos you get from it are washed out and not as crisp as what you’ll get from an iPhone.
At $234, it is a steal
To sum it all up, Xiaomi’s Mi A1 is a great phone. It doesn’t push the boundaries with design and it doesn’t have top of the line specs, but all of that is cancelled out with its price. It costs a paltry $234, or 15,000 Rupees. A myriad of sins can be forgiven at that price, and so the Mi A1’s shortcomings turn into ignorable bumps on the road. Not that there were many.
The biggest downfall of the Mi A1 is that it isn’t arriving in the US. It’s primarily going to be sold in India as well as a few other countries, including some in Africa, Asia and Central America. You can still find it online in the US, but given you won’t find it on Amazon or carrier stores, that does limit the Mi A1’s appeal.
Regardless, the combination of solid specs, premium design and the versatility and benefits of Android One shine through with the Mi A1 impressively. If you are looking for a budget phone that has it all, take a real hard look at Mi A1.
Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/xiaomi-mi-a1-review-this-android-one-device-is-a-killer-budget-phone/