Hey guys
Xiaomi is well-known for high quality Chinese phones that are sort of difficult to get in the West.
But this is about to change with the Mi A1, which is Xiaomi's first phone made in partnership with Google.
With the stock Android OS and global availability, is Xiaomi about to take the mid-range market by storm?
I'm Will for GSMArena, and this is a Xiaomi Mi A1 review.
If you've been following Xiaomi's phone releases you might do a double-take at the A1. It has a twin model called the Mi 5X.
It's all metal and feels premium and sturdy.
The edges are rounded and pretty smooth. The unibody is gap-free, but like most mid-range phones, the Mi A1 isn't water resistant.
There's a 3.5 millimeter audio jack at the bottom, along with the USB type-c port.
As for speakers, loudness is excellent and the sound is rich and crisp with even some good bass.
The 64 gigs of internal storage is expandable via microSD, which takes up your second SIM slot.
The always-on fingerprint reader is located on the back, is well centered, and easy to reach and really responsive to wake up your phone.
Like other Xiaomi devices, there's an IR blaster built into the A1 which can turn appliances on and off.
The backlit navigation touch keys are located below the 5.5 inch screen.
The Mi A1's IPS LCD has a 1080p resolution and is covered by Gorilla Glass, which is slightly curved along the edges.
It's a really great LCD.
It has some of the deepest blacks we've seen and the brightness is above average at over 500 nits.
Viewing angles are decent and sunlight legibility is pretty good too.
The Xiaomi Mi A1 runs Android 7.1.2 Nougat.
Unlike its twin the Mi 5X, the Mi A1 gives you a completely stock Android experience instead of the traditional MIUI.
This means you miss out on some of Xiaomi's proprietary features, but for fans of keeping things simple,
this is a feature in itself. You do so get a couple of Xiaomi apps -- Mi remote for the IR blaster and Feedback.
The simple interface is smooth, but there's nothing unique except for timely Android updates.
We're supposed to see an upgrade to Android Oreo by the end of the year.
Inside the Mi A1 is a Snapdragon 625 chipset with 4 gigs of RAM.
It's not the fastest available these days, but it's known for its power efficiency.
In benchmarks, performance is great - at the top of its class for this price range and
it stays cool even after heavy use. And, in everyday tasks it runs really smooth. We didn't notice any lag.
Battery life is really solid on the Xiaomi Mi A1.
It's 3080mAh battery and efficient chipset help it to score a great endurance rating in our proprietary tests.
We are disappointed that there is no quick charge option though.
With the regular charger, we charged the battery from 0 to 27 percent in 30 minutes.
The Mi A1 has a dual camera setup that is pretty similar to the one on the Xiaomi Mi 6,
one f/2.2 wide-angle and one f/2.6 telephoto camera, both at 12 megapixels.
We are missing the OIS and the bright lense on the A1 though.
In good lighting the camera snaps pictures blazingly fast with a great deal of detail and low noise.
The dynamic range is high without having to resort to HDR.
In low-light, performance is a bit underwhelming due to the lack of OIS
but, select the HHT low-light option, and you can still get a decent photo... Sometimes.
If you are handheld it can come out blurry - something we actually didn't experience on the Mi 5X. The telephoto camera doesn't work in low-light
but in decent lighting it gives you two times optical zoom.
The results are a bit soft and have more noise than we would have liked.
The telephoto also helps to create a blurred background effect behind your subject in portrait mode.
Once it's ready, the shots come out pretty fast
They have nice colors and mostly accurate blurring and edge detection. The front-facing camera is 5 megapixels and images come out okay.
Detail and dynamic range are nothing special,
but there is high contrast and pleasant colors.
For videos, clips taken in 1080p resolution are not very good. The level of detail is low and everything is way too over-sharpened, and the audio quality is not the best.
4K videos on the other hand are great if you keep your hand steady.
There's plenty of resolved detail, good colors and contrast, low noise and above-average dynamic range.
The audio quality, again, leaves more to be desired though.
The Xiaomi Mi A1 is one of those phones that delivers a ton of features for the money.
You don't get a lot of software features, but you do get stock Android.
Plus, there's a flagship level dual camera, though it is missing the OIS you get on the Mi 6.
But with so much to offer for 250 bucks, the Xiaomi Mi A1 is the mid-range phone to look out for this season.
Thanks for watching!
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and you can always stop by GSMArena.com for our full test findings.
See ya!
PRESENTER LAUGHS