Xiaomi Mi A1 review—A $220 iPhone clone with stock Android? Sign us up

The Xiaomi Mi A1.
Ron Amadeo
The back is all aluminum and, in this case, pink.
Ron Amadeo
Remember capacitive hardware buttons?
Ron Amadeo
A sizable top bezel has all the usual stuff.
Ron Amadeo
You get a rear fingerprint reader and a dual-camera system.
Ron Amadeo
Lower on the back, you get the Xiaomi logo, Xiaomi's name, "Designed by Xiaomi," CE and disposal markings, the country of origin and model number, and the Android One logo. In short, it's a hot mess.
Ron Amadeo
On the bottom, there's a speaker, USB-C port, and a headphone jack.
Ron Amadeo
The side.
Ron Amadeo

While Xiaomi keeps pushing back its attempts to get a serious foothold in the US, it's still fun to take a look at one of their phones once in a while. Today, we're looking at one of the highest-profile Android One devices out there, the Xiaomi Mi A1. With this phone, you get Xiaomi's typically great (if unoriginal) hardware with a mostly unaltered build of Android, which makes for a pretty awesome combo, especially for the low, low price of $220.

Xiaomi phones are often pretty difficult to purchase, but this phone, as part of the Android One program, is getting a rollout to more than 40 countries, along with a bit of a push from Google itself. None of those countries is officially the United States, but the Mi A1 is just a click away on Amazon. The problem you'll run into is with the LTE compatibility, but with band 4 it is partially compatible with T-Mobile and, if you're lucky, some Verizon and AT&T signals. There's also always Wi-Fi.

Design and build quality

SPECS AT A GLANCE: Xiaomi Mi A1
SCREEN	1920×1080 5.5" (403ppi) IPS LCD
OS	Android 8.0 Oreo
CPU	Eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 (eight 2.0 GHz Kyro 280 Cortex A53 cores)
RAM	4GB
GPU	Adreno 506
STORAGE	64GB
NETWORKING	802.11b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS
BANDS	GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz WCDMA: 850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz FDD-LTE: B1, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B20 TDD-LTE: B38, B40
PORTS	USB 3.0 Type-C, 3.5mm headphone jack
CAMERA	dual 12MP rear camera, 5MP front camera
SIZE	155.4 x 75.8 x 7.3 mm (6.12 x 2.98 x 0.29 in)
WEIGHT	165 g (5.82 oz)
BATTERY	3,080 mAh
STARTING PRICE	$219
OTHER PERKS	fingerprint sensor, notification LED, MicroSD slot, IR blaster

Xiaomi often seems like a two-faced company when it comes to design. The company is capable of producing totally original, stunning devices, like the Mi Mix 1 and 2. The rest of the time, though, Xiaomi acts like a disappointing knockoff brand that does whatever Apple has been doing lately, just cheaper.

The Xiaomi Mi A1 is an iPhone—there's really no getting around it. Xiaomi has traced every single line of an iPhone 6 or 7 Plus, resulting in a device that—if it were officially sold in the US—could easily draw the ire of Apple's lawyers. Even the little details are copied, down to the exact iPhone 7 antenna lines and a pair of Apple's pentalobe screws on the bottom edge. I would not expect a cheap phone to blow me away in the design department, but that does not mean it needs to look like a counterfeit iPhone. It's a bit embarrassing to show off a device that is such a shameless copy.

On the bright side, Xiaomi has had years of practice ripping off Apple's designs, and today the company does a darn good job of building an iPhone. This is flagship-worthy build quality at a third of the price. We get a beautifully crafted phone made of aluminum that feels way more expensive than the $220 asking price. The metal smoothly wraps around the side of the phone to meet the glass front and finishes with a nice chamfered edge. The side buttons are also aluminum and have a solid, clicky action. Along the bottom edge, you get a very iPhony layout with a surprisingly loud bottom-firing speaker, USB Type-C, and a headphone jack.

The iPhone 7 Plus (right) and the Mi A1 (left). If I covered up the logos, could you tell the difference? Xiaomi even has the antenna lines matched, although they are a different color.
Apple/Xiaomi
You can identify the iPhone by the home button, but if that weren't there, again, this would be hard.
Apple/Xiaomi
Here's the iPhone 6 Plus (top) versus the Mi A1 (bottom), and you have nearly identical bottoms.
Ron Amadeo
Xiaomi (bottom) even uses Apple's "Pentalobe" security screw head (top). This would be impressive if it weren't so sad.
Ron Amadeo

Xiaomi's one unique contribution to the design of the Mi A1 is a set of very dated navigation buttons. First of all, just about every Android phone—even the budget models—use on-screen buttons now, but Xiaomi is ignoring that trend and going with some old-school painted-on buttons. These would be alright if not for the fact that Xiaomi put them on in the wrong order, going with a backwards "Recent, Home, Back" layout, from left to right, instead of the standard "Back, Home, Recent" layout. Samsung used to push this layout, too, but with the launch of the Galaxy S8 and the switch to on-screen buttons, you can even get the correct order on a Samsung phone now.

Considering on-screen buttons were part of the original Android One spec, the Mi A1's painted-on buttons make it feel less like a device purpose-built for the Android One program and more like a leftover Xiaomi device that had stock Android slapped onto it.

Xiaomi also picked some weird iconography for the buttons. The Recent Apps icon is still an old-school menu icon, a button Android deprecated six years ago. If I could change one thing about the Mi A1, it would be to fix the button order. If this is your only device, though, it's not a huge deal.

While the build quality is fantastic, you do trade off some things for the lower price. Of course you don't get a modern slim bezel design with an extra-tall screen, a feature that is quickly becoming a standard in the flagship market. You also don't get any kind of water or dust resistance. There's no NFC, so you'll have to do without Android Pay, and there's only the bog-standard 5V/2A charging. You do get some extras, though—namely an IR blaster (for using the phone as a remote control), a capable fingerprint reader, and a MicroSD slot.

As much as I dislike the copycat design and backward hardware buttons, Xiaomi did so many other things right that you quickly forget just how little this phone costs. The excellent build quality and metal body leave you wondering why you'd pay so much more money for a flagship phone. The 5.5-inch 1080p LCD is good enough that you don't feel like you're missing out compared to the flagship displays. You still get plenty of RAM (4GB), lots of storage (64GB), and a decent battery (3040mAh). The biggest spec downgrade over a flagship phone is the Snapdragon 625 SoC, which is slower than the higher-end Snapdragon 835. It's still fine in normal 2D apps, but heavy 3D gamers will find the GPU lacking.

For $220, you can easily forgive the flaws. In its price range, the Mi A1 is fantastic hardware, if you can just deal with the LTE bands.

The Software

Android One means stock Android. Here are the home screen, app drawer, and recent apps. That's a pretty clean app drawer.
The lock screen, notification panel, and quick settings.
The settings, Xiaomi's special "Mi Services" page, and the about screen.
Xiaomi's Mi remote app.
Xiaomi's Feedback page, which has a home screen icon for some reason.

The Xiaomi Mi A1 is an Android One phone, so it ships with stock Android 8.0 Oreo. That means there's not a ton to talk about that wasn't covered in our massive Android 8.0 review, and that's a good thing! You get a mostly unaltered build of Android with a design that fits with the rest of the app ecosystem. Everything works, and there are no janky third-party additions to worry about. For Xiaomi, the Android One program is particularly a big deal, since its usual Android skin, MIUI, is one of the heaviest (and worst) Android skins out there.

You get the Google Assistant in this build of Android, and while it will respond to "OK Google" whenever the screen is on, "always-on" mode—which would let it respond when the screen is off—is not an option.

You only get two extra apps after the standard-issue Android stuff. There's a "Mi Remote" app for using the IR blaster and a "Feedback" app to send your feedback directly to Xiaomi. I was able to quickly get Mi Remote working with my home theater system. You just pick a device type, like "TV," then pick a brand, and you'll go through some testing procedures so the app can learn your remote codes. You can uninstall the Mi Remote app if you aren't interested in IR functionality or if you want to use an alternative remote app.

The "Feedback" app seems unnecessary, since it basically just opens an email form to Xiaomi. This seems like something that should be buried in the settings somewhere, rather than existing as a top-level icon. Worst of all, you can't uninstall or disable the app.

Xiaomi's Android One update outlook

As far as updates go, Android One has taken a big step backward from what it was when it debuted. While it is still stock Android, it went from day-one updates developed by Google, to much slower updates that are handled by the OEMs.

We don't have to worry about guessing how long updates will take, since we already have some cold, hard evidence for this exact phone. The Mi A1 already got an update. It launched with Android 7.0 and, after a few misfires, received a final update to 8.0 Oreo in January. Oreo originally launched in August, so that's five months for an update. For a flagship phone, that would be a relatively standard update speed from a company like Samsung. Remember, though, this is a $220 device, and in this price range, any major OS updates are comparatively rare.

You do get regular monthly security updates, and they're easy to apply thanks to support for Android's "seamless update" partition layout. Seamless updates uses a dual system partition setup to apply updates in the background, with only a quick reboot for downtime.

Oreo won't be the end of the Mi A1's update life cycle either. In its initial launch post, Google said the phone would be "one of the first to receive an upgrade to Android P." All Android One phones get software updates for "at least 18 months after the phone's launch."

Since the Mi A1 launched with Android 7.0 and was updated to Android 8.0, it does not have Project Treble support. Devices launching with 8.0 will be required to support Treble, which modularizes the OS away from the hardware drivers, making updates easier. While Treble will save work for the OEM, it will also be a huge boon for the custom ROM scene, where it removes the need to make a separate build of Android for every single device. Already, generic builds of Android are out there that will work on any device that supports Treble. Adding Treble support to a device that didn't launch with it is possible, but, so far, HMD has no plans to do this.

On the plus side for the do-it-yourself crowd, the Mi A1 has an unlockable boot loader, so with the dev tools and a simple command, you can load whatever you want onto the A1.

Listing image by Ron Amadeo

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