Xiaomi Mi A1 In Depth Review

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The Xiaomi Mi A1 is one of Xiaomi’s biggest releases of the year 2017. Despite its overall humbling package, the phone marks a few important milestones for the Chinese company as well as for the Android ecosystem.

In this review, we’ll take an in-depth dive into the Xiaomi Mi A1. Rather than listing specs and talking about how the experience felt, this feature attempts to provide a thorough look with contents relevant to our reader base.
specification sheet

  • Android Version 7.1.2 Nougat (Android One)
  • Chipset Snapdragon 625, Octa Core Cortex-A53, 8x 2GHz, Adreno 506 GPU
  • RAM 4 GB LPDDR3
  • Storage 64GB eMMC
  • Dimensions 155.4 × 75.8 × 7.3 cm (~70.1% screen-to-body)
  • Display 5.5 inch 1080p IPS LCD (401p ppi)
  • Battery 3,080mAh non-removable
  • Sensors Fingerprint, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity, Ambient Light, Electronic Compass
  • Connectivity USB 2.0 Type-C, Hybrid SIM tray (Micro SIM + Nano SIM or Micro SIM + Micro SD card),
    3.5mm audio jack, IR Blaster
  • Rear Camera Dual 12MP, PDAF, 4K@30FPS / 720p@120FPS video
  • Wide Angle: f/2.2
  • Telephoto: f/2.6, 2x optical zoom
  • Front Camera 5MP, Fixed Focus, 1080p@30FPS video
  • Weight 165g

The volume rocker and the power button find their place on the right of the device. Much like the Redmi Note 4, the buttons have no sideways wiggle to them but they still have a muted response. The weak tactile feedback was not as much of an issue with the Redmi Note 4, but with the Mi A1, the unsatisfying click on the power button often prompted me to inadvertently half-click it again, which led to situations where the camera app opened up when I expected the phone to have its screen off. The power button gesture can be disabled, and one does eventually get used to the weak response, so this is unlikely to be a deal breaker.

The notification LED only displays white https://cdn2.desidime.com/assets/textile-editor/icon_rolleyes.gif (and not multicolored), as per my experience and testing. On the Gold color variant which has a white front, this white notification LED was hard to spot in a few instances like under bright sunlight, with its saving grace being that it was very bright nonetheless. Using a different color LED would have been a smarter choice for the white front phone. While a multicolor LED is not guaranteed in this price range, it was unexpected to not find it on this phone considering Xiaomi’s lower priced devices had multicolor LEDs.

GeekBench, a benchmark that helps assess CPU performance, gives the Xiaomi Mi A1 a score of 877/4204. This surprisingly beats not only the Redmi Note 4, but the Redmi Note 3 as well on its multi core performance. BaseMark OS II, which measures performance through various calculations and transformations, gives the Mi A1 a total score of 1241, with the Mi A1 scoring higher on system performance than the Redmi Note 4. Individual benchmark numbers mean very little by themselves, but the overall trend with the benchmark scores places the Mi A1 firmly in the mid end segment, behind the flagships like the 835 and 821 and upper mid end SoCs like the 660. PCMark, which takes a holistic approach to benchmarking by putting the device through common real-world scenarios in a less-discrete testing environment, scored the Mi A1 at 4753, which is similar to what the Redmi Note 4 managed to score.

Unsurprisingly, the Mi A1 performs very close to the Redmi Note 4 when it comes to GPU benchmarking and gaming performance. So while the gaming performance per se will not compete against flagships, the Adreno 506 does well for most intensive games. Although they may start off at the lowest graphics settings, you can crank up the graphics quality to medium and high (on a case by case basis) and suffer no loss in FPS as several popular titles cap out at 30 FPS anyways.

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