Hello dear folks,
I am new A1 owner, coming from the line of 20+ phones, working at IT, access to all different flagships, etc etc.. Last few years s7, s8, v10,v20. As much as i am fan of rooting, more I am fan on timely updates and Android One, which I just recently heard about, so this is my first Android One phone.
I heard about it from dev over at xda, never would actually think of the Xiaomi and their phones but recommendation from dev is always a good sign. So i went for it, went into first shop and bought it.
And dear, am i suprised! This thing exceeded my expectations by miles. First of all stock Oreo. sp625,4gb for the price?! That quality camera?! Battery life great? Can use camera2api and google camera?! Metal case that actually is NOT a fingerprint magnet?! All that for the price of 1/4 of some flagship?! Man. I dont know if that out of the box performance will stay like that, but i can only assume so since its stock oreo, and 4gb holds basicly all my apps ready to go instantly when i do multitask. I have no complaints with the screen also. Good colours and viewing angles. Crisp.
Oh and did i mention that 600ohm audio? yeah, its great and loud as fuck.
The only real sign that this is “cheap” phone that i can see is lower quality of buttons. they are not as clicky as im used to on say, samung, and they are lower cost material. nothing to really worry about, they dont seem to die anytime soon, its just the “feel”.
I can assure you that coming from much more expensive phones, you wont notice much difference in performance. the more advanced hardware+heavy skins of flagships mia1 fights with stock no bloat experiance paired with 625 which is known for good battery life and solid performance. camera is again, great. optical zoom, portrait modes are something i use daily, cleverly thrown at you at great camera interface that doesent bury you with options unless you need them.
Long story short – This is a GREAT phone for the price even compared with flagships. Maybe the best one I would dare to say, in its price point and a bit above that.
Xiaomi needs more recognition for this one.
Thanks for reading, just wanted to share my 2 cents.
Cheers!
Any app recommendations for the Mi A1?
No, bluetooth works fine for me
It hard bricked, sadly. Just happened last week! I mostly chose the A1 because of its price to make up for the pixel dying early
Hey there! Welcome to the Xiaomi revolution!
I switched recently too; went from an LG G6 that I was sick of for multiple reasons (locked bootloader on the Canadian variant, manufacturer skin, overheating, etc.) to the A1, and I was genuinely amazed! I expected to feel some of the compromises of going from a flagship to a midranger…especially one from china that most people over here in the True North Strong and Free have never heard of, but needless to say I too was blown away! The only issue I’ve noticed after a month of ownership has been scratching and scuffing on one of the chamfered edges of my phone, but I chalk that up to the case I have on it. It bugs me, but it’s not big deal. Where it counts, this phone has epic build quality, nice specs and a great price point. Plus being contract-free and owing my device is worth more than I can say. 🙂
What are the chances for the next Android One phone by Xiaomi to be released this year?
hey.. still amazed like on the start.. the only think I am thinking about is that it has bezels + hardware buttons, so maybe a bezelless version would be fine, but xiaomi is not making anything in this price range with android one + usb-c port yet, so yes, its still the perfect phone for this money.
You have to modify your phone to get the google camera.
This is a method that does it without rooting the phone. Have done it myself just this morning and it worked. The camera upgrade makes it a whole new phone – and you love it already!
https://forum.xda-developers.com/mi-a1/how-to/tool-google-camera-root-magisk-enable-t3747585
True but a dedicated camera would sit on a shelf until i need it for a holiday or something.
A smartphone is conveniently with me at all times and ready to take photos in seconds, so why not try to get the best quality out of it.
Not the case for everyone, but it is for me
Edit: also $800 was in AUD, not USD if that confused anyone
Mi5s and 5s plus 235-250 Inc shipping and taxes prepaid anywhere.
Mi note 3, same thing.
Mi 6 +- 300.
Mi a1, 200.
Shipping to NZ available. So… What are you talking about?
thanks dude
I’ll take a sd845 mi mix and eventually flash AOSP. Sure it’s 2-3x as expensive but it’s also 3x as fast and has better “everything”.
The sd 625 is fine, but its fairly slow. It also has very, very slow 4g. And the SoC used doesn’t make a significant difference in battery life anyway. With a huge battery the faster yet less efficient SoC is definitely the way to go.
Their primary market does not care about nfc. Here in India, no one uses it.
Specs say it all, you’ve just never had a fast phone.
I’ve got a sd625 redmi note 4 (4gb/64gb) from last may running AOSP. I’ve also got the regular 4 with the 425. Meanwhile one of my better friends has a, I said Sony but it wasn’t, it’s an oppo, with the sd660. And my main phone is a Sony xzs.
My friend upgraded from a Sony with the sd630, which he found too slow.
I’m upgrading to the mi mix 2s soon. Sd821 is relatively fast but no longer fast enough.
Have you got all of these running AOSP or at least running AOSP at one point to compare?
The a1 isn’t some superspecial phone that somehow runs faster with the same hardware.
The sd400 series is slow. Bearable with AOSP. Sd625 is bearable with miui and adequate with AOSP. The 660 is good on Sony’s stock rom but actually fast on AOSP. Better than the 821 in some cases.
I use the redmi 4 as a portable l Spotify streaming device on the go. My grandfather owns the note 4 now, I gave it to him after his HTC m7 died.
So yes, I can safely say I actually know the difference between them.
Oh no I somewhat agree. It’s not a bad phone but for many getting a year old flagship would be much better.
I also wonder how it’ll run with 10 tabs open in Chrome, running Spotify, Facebook and messenger apps at the same time.
Do realize that the sd625 has memory at half the speed of the newer 8xx series.
The 630, if you like the 625 so much, would be superior in that regard. Supporting 1333mhz lpddr4 instead of 933 lpddr3.
I honestly believe xiaomi is just getting rid of old stock with this before upgrading to 630 and 660.
Global version only has one 4g band that works with at&t.
The noise on the headphones comes from the phone having a big output on the corded jack, and it goes away with headphones that have a higher impedence value. It’s a downside, but the upside is that with good jack headphones the phone sounds fantastic.
Also coming from a mobile game dev company so I deal with all kind of flagships, mid-range, and lower range phone on a daily basis and I can vouch that Mi A1, and most of Xiaomi phone in general, is always a good deal for the price.
I don’t know that much about cars and I’m not interested either, my examples were bold so you could see the point, but it clearly went over your head. The phone is fast, you can try to debunk that after you try it.
For 800$ you can get the camera that is 10x better than any phone
Nope
Most (if not all) Xiaomi phones are GSM, so sprint and Verizon won’t work correctly
It has similar outside hardware to the OP5, which is already good value, and then slightly slower performance but at half of the price of that. Even if the phone feels slow after one or two years, it would still be great value.
It’s in xdxda, not play store
It improves the camera A LOT
Heh, this was posted 4 months ago :p
i dont really use nfc at all, and google pay and stuff is still not available in my country so i can live with that.
Welcome to the xiaomi club! It’s pretty unbelievable when you first touch it lol.
I’m very hyped about A1 and A go project. As much as I love miui, stock Android can definitely be assured to give good performance. Just imagine the Redmi 6A with SD 450 and A go, only for 85 bucks. That’ll be insane.
My hope is that they’ll take the RN5P as the next gen of A1.
I didn’t think I would need it, but just after I bought the phone, all banks in my country started to use Android(now Google) pay, which requires NFC, so now I’m kind of sad, that Mi A1 lacks one.
Is it just a phanta-sea?
It’s not perfect and it has some problems. For me worst problem is very bad camera in low light conditions, especially in videos. Also there is a lot of sound noise when you use jack headphones. But if you don’t look at that problems, it’s very good quality phone.
Thanks! It worked fine and indeed it improves the camera a lot!
exactly. agreed with your first sentance specially!
Haven’t you heard about Mi A2 releasing july 24
And this is exactly the same with almost all xiaomi phone if you install lineageOS.
People are either scared or too bothered to flash but honestly if you do it like on the Redmi note 4X, it’s a real gem just like the mia1.
I was very interested to read the comments about the comparison from pixel phone.
LMAO so now you know every phone I’ve had? That’s a great comeback there man. I’m not interested in the rest of your comment since it’s probably more of the same. You could ask every mia1 owner if the phone is fast or not and you’ll get the same answer from everyone. Hell even the other guy you were arguing with before couldn’t have explained it better yet you’re still here talking about a phone you’ve never used.
Xiaomi has great hardware for a very affordable price. Combine that with stock Android and you get a gem. I’m waiting for their next Android one phone to upgrade from my Mi 4i.
Yep, apparently, also not really popular in the US (the latest news is Xiaomi planning to enter the US market).
https://www.pymnts.com/nfc/2016/uk-lessons-for-us-mobile-payments-adoption/
Coupled with NFC licensing fees, waiting for NFC in budget Chinese/Indian phones is a hopeless endeavour.
Question. Would this phone work with Verizon? Looking to replace my Pixel XL as I’ve been having issues with it.
Hey, glad you’re enjoying the A1. I’m also strongly considering one. Do you experience any problems with it? Screen lag when you scroll, headphone hiss, data dropping out etc? Cheers!
Don’t have a link handy, but the other pixel feature is you can rootless install the pixel homescreen launcher apk and I really like that too.
Yeah I totally agree with you! I bought my A1 few days ago and I love it more than every Samsung flagship I had before!
But how did you manage to user Google camera? I can’t install it from the play store.
yup, I am wondering the same. It seems that you will be able to disable the gestures however
You can get the international version with more bands on it though, no?
Xiaomi simply has the best value for the price. Their Redmi lineup is pretty awesome too.
You’re still saying the mia1 is not fast when it is fast. Do you own it? Have you tried it? You also keep saying 625 is slower than numbers above 625. Well yeah, that’s the logic behind the names they get, I bet 400 is slower than 625 and 800 is faster than 625.
What I mean is you’re coming to a post about how happy a guy is with his new a1, which he feels is fast and reliable to talk about how it’s not fast and how this or that are faster.
Imagine you just buy a car, you get a nice chevrolet cruze and you are talking about how this car works wonders for you when suddenly this random guy comes talking about how slow and mediocre your cruze is, that if you want a car that works wonders and it’s reliable you should get a ferrari, or even a mercedez will be infinitely better. See my point?
Yep this is real life. Was as shocked as you when I got my Mi A1 for around $270. Enjoy your phone !
Ba Dum Tissss
It’s not fast. Prove it’s fast, fast being relative to other phones the same money could have bought.
I just listed 4 phones in the same price range that are a fair bit faster. Msrp is a bad way to compare prices, the mi a1 is +- 200$. The same goes for the mi5s, mi5s plus, note 3 pro. The mi6 can occasionally be found around 250.
And those have the sd821, 660 and 835 as a SoC.
If you want the truth, this phone has hardware thats been outdated for a good year. Refute that.
Great that you’re defending it but it’s a bit fanboyish. This is what I’m used to from Apple fan boys. 300+ arguments that start with “but”.
> Oh and did i mention that 600ohm audio? yeah, its great and loud as fuck.
loled at that statement. There is no such thing as “600ohm audio”. A headphone with a rather low resistance (such as the K7XX) can be very hard to drive if it has a low sensitivity, while a high resistance headphone can be rather easy to drive if it has a high sensitivity.
Things like “up to 600ohm headphones” or “600ohm audio” is *pure* marketing bullshit.
Mine just arrived earlier today. Last phone I used prior to the A1 was the HTC M8s I bought close to 2 and a half years ago. Boy did I not expect it to be this high quality. I’m actually amazed we live in a time where this kind of technology can be considered “budget”. After a day of use I can easly say that so far my expectations have been exceeded by far.
The sd821 can be relatively slow when I’m using my phone a lot. And it has twice the single core performance of the 625 and +-30% better multicore performance.
As even with AOSP and tweaks the 821 can eventually slow down I can’t call the 625 anything but slow.
Fast compared to the 400 series maybe?
I’m torn between getting the Mi A1 or Redmi Note 5 Pro.
Also, what’s the likelihood Xiaomi releases a Mi A2?
Agreed. There’s hype about NFC, but yet no one uses it.
Do u experience any issues? Like the screen lag when you’re scrolling?
You don’t own the phone so you are in no position to judge. Also clearly the SD625 is going to be slower when compared to higher end processors, but they also have the better specs so that’s expected.
I’m coming from a pixel 1 xl and I agree. The biggest downfall is the camera and I kinda miss the OLED display. With that said, this phone is insane for ~$220. I love it! One last issue is the not so great 4g coverage in the u.s. but I knew that going in
In terms of what?
this is not a cpu fight man hahah
lets put it like this-its fast in every app i tried. its also a plenty of ram thing and stock oreo. your fast is probably not my fast if you know what i mean. you probably have higher definition on fast, which is ok.
on the other hand i can assure you if i would show performance of this phone to 90% of population, they would say “yep, its fast”. you are other 10% and i respect that, no question about that.
on a side note, with android optimizations and use of better and more ram, the differences in mid tier and high tier cpus become smaller and smaller. in same cases we are talking 0.10, 0.20 maybe 0.30 secs difference when opening apps. thats not something some peoople even notice. yes, you will get 10fps more in games. or 20../whatever. yes, i can tell the difference in lets say Hearthstone with mia1 and s8 which was my last phone before this. but phone, photos, reddit, podcasts, chrome,maps? other everyday apps? man i cant really say i notice much difference. im sure its there but its too minor to even notice in day to day use.
ram menagement of oreo with 4gbs does wonders.apps that i opened 2 days ago (example:manga mania, no bg services, so still app for reading) just pop back up to screen without any loading. the ones that do purge from ram eventually, load very fast and without lag. does that not count as “fast”?
i come from series of flagships, older and newer. ive used speed and oc karnels, i played with undervolting for this and that, i switched roms/karnels daily on some devices trying to find a perfect combo. also, where i hear sd625 i hear decent battery life. and it is.
the point im actually trying to make here is that its my honest opinion that mia1 is fast.im not biased, paid by xiaomi or stuff like that, but a dude that comes from long lineup of phones, and yes i am pleasently suprised about performance of this one compared to what you get for a 4-5 times more money when you buy flagship.
dont bring bad rep to this excellent phone saying its slow, because man, its not.
/ill walk myself out
i went from a google pixel to the a1 after i dropped the pixel on its head in a case (no cracks, just..dead)
the A1 feels and even looks exactly like the pixel did, people dont even realise i bought a new phone.
only difference is the buttons, i agree dont feel as good, and the obvious loss of quality on the camera, but i installed gcam and its still fine to use as a daily driver.
long story short it cost $800 less and the only thing i miss is the better camera quality
i wouldent really agree with being slow. altho you are entitled to have your own opinion 😉
Someone downvoted you, I upvoted you as not agreeing =/= downvoting.
I hope xiaomi will use the sd660 from now on. It outperforms the 821 in multicore and is only 10% below it in single core.
The 625 isn’t bad but the 650/660 are infinitely better.
Year old phones still cost upwards of twice the price at least in NZ.
But the 652 would have been far superior.
And while the 625 can definitely run just fine it’s far from fast.
My sd821 sometimes slows down a bit, even with an AOSP rom. I can’t imagine having to use a 625.
not anything of the mentioned so far. working great!
Oh brilliant, am glad it all worked for you!
You’re the one who need to prove it’s not fast. I own the device, and it runs fast 🙂 you don’t own it, and just talk about this and that.
Ferrari? Reliable? Oh god you have no idea. They’re fast and luxurious. But hardly reliable. Audi is more fun and more bang for the buck, porsche is very reliable but overpriced. BMW is very reliable but doesn’t have the magic that the others have while driving.
If you want to take fast, luxurious and big. Maybe Bentley makes sense.
Anyway, you get it right here with
>which he feels is fast and reliable
He feels it’s fast. But it’s not. And reliable, nobody can say just yet as the phone hasn’t been around all that long.
In smartphoneworld using a 2+ year old midrange SoC does not equal fast. No matter what you say. It’s not slow.
It does its job. That’s what it’s supposed to do. And that’s fine. But don’t go around calling with a recently released fiat with a 20 year old mediocre engine fast when you can buy a car that was released 18 months ago with all new hardware for only a few % more.
Taking cars as an example, you wouldn’t buy a Skoda if a faster, more luxurious Audi was available for a fraction more.
yes, thats how I feel too.. owning miA1 for a week now. lets see what I will say after a year, but I feel like I was being ripped off by the expensive companies like samsung and apple all the time till now.
what is the point to give out 1k € for an expensive smartphone, when it slows down as hell after 2 years anyway?!
and – as we all know, the companies are spying on us all the time. FB, google etc – they collect our data from the mobile devices and are selling them to other companies for profit (I am working in marketing and using that too).
So should those devices be for free actualy?
Anyhow, I never buy an expensive flagship phone again. : )
Do you notice those same problems with Bluetooth headphones? I have an A1 and recently ordered a Bluetooth headphones by AliExpress, I do not know if the sound problem is solved with that …