Xiaomi has just unveiled a new smartphone in India: the Xiaomi Mi A1. Featuring a “flagship dual-camera” – it’s a similar implementation as the iPhone 7 Plus‘ – a premium all-metal body and stock Android, the Mi A1 is a pretty interesting smartphone.
At the launch event, Xiaomi emphasised the A1’s dual-camera system quite a bit. Featuring a 12MP 50mm telephoto lens and a 12MP 26mm wide-angle lens, the A1 can do 2x optical zoom. Much like the iPhone 7 Plus, the OnePlus 5, and of course, even the Xiaomi Mi 6, Portrait Mode is also present on the Mi A1. The front-facing camera, on the other hand, is a 5MP shooter.
Aside from its camera configuration, the Mi A1 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset, which puts it comfortably as a mid-range smartphone. it also has a 5.5-inch Full HD display, 64GB of expandable storage, 4GB of RAM, a rear fingerprint sensor, and a 3,080mAh battery. While this isn’t the most generous battery capacity, the power efficiency of the Snapdragon 625 should give decent battery life.
But the most interesting aspect of the Mi A1 is perhaps the fact that it is “created by Xiaomi, powered by Google.” That’s right: the Mi A1 is indeed Xiaomi’s very first Android One smartphone. Basically, users can expect a stock, clean version of Android on the Mi A1; this alone makes the device that much more compelling. Android Oreo is said to arrive on the A1 within this year too.
Like other devices from Xiaomi, the Mi A1 is competitively priced: it retails at only 14,999 Indian rupee, which comes up to about RM995. As for availability, the Mi A1 will be sold in India from 12 September onwards, and it will be available in Malaysia by the end of September 2017.
