Xiaomi Mi A1 Review : After 6 Months of Use!

Xiaomi makes amazing phones for amazing prices and the Mi A1 is no exception. It's one of the best phones made by Xiaomi in our opinion. I've been using the Xiaomi Mi A1 more than 6 months now and here are our thoughts on this phone.

Performance

When it comes to performance the Xiaomi Mi A1 does a very good job for day to day tasks like using social media, watching videos, making calls or writing a message to someone. When it comes to games, the Mi A1 doesn’t offer the best experience as it is limited by its mid-range Snapdragon 625 CPU, but it can easily run heavy games like Shadow Gun Dead zone and Marvel-Future Fights on High Settings. You do get a few frames drops by playing on Ultra quality. When it comes to multi-tasking the Mi A1 does quite a very nice job due to its 4 GB RAM, opening a ton of apps together isn’t a problem, however in some cases the phone does tend to restart the app instead of storing your session. Storing music, pictures and apps hasn’t been a problem for me either due to its 64 GB internal storage. Yes, it’s not a lot but for a person like me who takes a fair number of pictures, its more than enough I would say.

Camera Quality

The Camera Quality is something to really admire. The Mi A1 has the best camera quality in this budget range. It has 2 rear shooters that help it with shooting better pictures. One lens is a tele-photo lens for zooming in without losing picture quality, it also helps take portrait pictures. One thing we noticed that was a little sketchy was that when we zoomed in two times more the default camera app didn’t switch the cameras and remained as the same and so it was zooming in digitally which was pretty bad, however you could use the second telephoto lens by going into the apps manual mode and switching from the wide lens to telephoto, but I think this is something that should be done manually.Other than that, the second camera makes great use of the portrait mode which does a very decent job in most of the cases. In some cases, the phone seems to miss the subject and blur it out or sometimes it doesn’t isolate the subject properly and so it looks faked. And even if it gets the picture right, I’ve noticed that the pictures get a little softer and loose a little detail. Another occasion where the phone’s portrait mode struggles is in low-light. The pictures in low-light are just un-usable and not good to look at and share.

Coming to the selfie shooter of the Mi A1, I think Xiaomi could’ve done better. It’s not the worst but it seems to struggle a lot in low light and sometimes even in good lighting it sometimes makes the picture a little bit softer than we’d like.

Reliability

Reliability is something that can only be tested by using the phone for a long period of time. Yes, the Mi A1 has been a reliable daily driver so far but it has run into a few problems. It went into a weird sleep mode where the phone’s screen won’t turn on but the navigation buttons below the phone were lit up and so I could control nothing and do nothing but hard restart the phone by holding the power button for around 10 seconds. This weird thing has happened to me twice.

Another thing that I thought was something Xiaomi could have done much better was to put a better fingerprint reader. The fingerprint reader does detect my finger most of the time, but it fails as well. Secondly the fingerprint sensor is … slow. Its slower then Xiaomi’s cheaper phones and many other phones I have used, which is a huge shame.Other than that, the phone hasn’t run into any other issues and has been smooth throughout. The Mi A1 did come with a two-year warranty which is still valid, so that’s a plus!

Battery

The battery of the Mi A1 is… fine. It’s not something I’d be impressed of. It gets me through my day while still having around 10% to 15% left, but it’s important for me to plug it in at night before going to sleep otherwise the battery seems to drain out to 0%. This was odd for me as I noticed that the phone did this even if I left for sleep with 20% in it. But I am confident that this can be easily fixed after a software update.

Software

Speaking of updates, the software of this phone is good. Xiaomi advertises the A series as designed by Xiaomi, powered by Google. This is because the Mi A1 is an Android One device, so it comes with stock Android and gets security updates every month and is promised to be update for 2 years. I have to say I have like the software experience so far, it’s neat and clean and it doesn’t have any bloatware pre-installed except for 2 apps that can easily be uninstalled. I don’t get a software update super quick neither have I still received an update for Android Pie, but I am not supposed to because the Mi A1 is supposed to receive the latest updates but not the fastest like the Pixel series.

Sound Quality

The Mi A1 doesn’t rock dual speakers, but even with one speaker it has some decent audio quality. The single rear speaker does get loud and remains clear. The phone also has a headphone jack which is cool. But wait there’s more… The headphone jack is no ordinary headphone jack it has a DAC, which improves the sound quality.

I didn’t have any issues with cell reception and calls sound as they are supposed to. The microphone is also nothing fancy, it records good enough audio.

Build Quality

The build quality of the Xiaomi Mi A1 is nice. Firstly, let’s discuss the design. The design looks extremely like the iPhone 7+. It looks so similar that 99% of the people who saw this phone thought it was the iPhone 7+ and I don’t blame them because it does look a lot like the iPhone. The dual cameras look like the iPhone, the matte black material looks like the iPhone as well. The front of the phone also looks a lot like the phone.

Coming to the build quality. I’ve honestly dropped the phone at least twice, and the phone hasn’t gotten any significant damage yet. But I did end up installing a case because the phone was slippery in my hand and I had constant fear of dropping it and seeing for the last time, and to be honest the case helps, it gives a little more grip and adds a little more protection as well.

Should you still buy this phone today

Well, the phone is still very usable today, and so I would recommend this phone if it’s on for a lower price than $160 USD and if that’s your budget. There are 3 reasons you shouldn’t buy the Mi A1, firstly the phone is aging, the Mi A2 has come out and so the value has dropped, secondly the Mi A1 doesn’t have a very good resale value and lastly, because the Pocophone F1 is here. The Pocophone F1 is an amazing phone with much better specs for just $300 USD. So, I’d recommend having a look at that if your budget allows you to! Read on : About the Pocophone F1 Featured I