Xiaomi Mi A2 long-term review

Android One

The promise of Android One is that it delivers a software experience that looks pretty much like what you'd see on a Pixel, but you get it in a mid-range smartphone that's made by another company and not Google. That sums up the Mi A2 pretty nicely, but there are caveats.

Let's start with the good stuff, though. The UI you see on this phone is, for most people, indistinguishable from what you'd get on a Pixel. There are subtle differences here and there, but most of those can be attributed to the fact that you're not likely to find a Pixel still running Android Oreo. More on that later.

Stock looks: Google Feed • Home screen • App drawer

The launcher, the app drawer, the Settings menu - everything just gives off a 'stock Android' vibe, that is, if you adhere to the definition of that being whatever Google thinks Android should look like (let's not get into whether AOSP is actually 'stock' or not). Everything is nice and clean, and Xiaomi has only added one Settings item - Mi Services - which relates to collecting anonymous usage data.

Stock-like Settings with just one Xiaomi addition

The other Xiaomi things you'll find are a few pre-installed apps: Feedback (which is self-descriptive), File Manager (which duplicates Google's Files but actually has much more functionality than that bare bones app), Mi Drop (used to quickly send files to another device), and Mi Remote (which is what you want in order to use the IR blaster on the handset). That's it, the entire amount of non-Google 'bloatware'. We'd call every single one of these apps pretty useful given what they do, so we weren't tempted to uninstall any of them. Oh, and technically the Camera app is Xiaomi's too, but that's unescapable since the Google Camera app is proprietary and not shared with the companies making Android One phones.

Aside from that, it's as if you bought this phone straight from Google, with the same list of apps showing up when you first turn it on as on a Pixel. This all makes for a very clean user experience indeed, but it's an experience you had on a Pixel up until August. That's when Android 9 Pie got released, and despite Android One's promise of fast updates, the Mi A2 still runs Android 8.1 Oreo.

The About screen at the time of this review's writing

The first reports of the Android Pie update seeding to users came in a couple of days before this review was published and our review unit still doesn't have it so this review is based entirely on Oreo.

Speaking of updates, security patches are coming in, so that's a plus for the Mi A2 and the Android One program in general compared to how mid-rangers that aren't part of it are generally treated by most Android device makers. The Mi A2 is currently on the November 2018 security patch level, so all is good on this front.

We struggle to add anything more to this section because Android One is, in essence, 'stock Android', so that is exactly what you're getting. People who enjoy having gazillions of options in Settings for every possible thing will be disappointed, and so will fans of Xiaomi's MIUI because the software on the Mi A2 is as far removed from that as it can be. On the other hand, if you like your software experience clean and Googley, you will love the system that the Mi A2 boots.

Performance

Here's where you enter an uncanny valley type of situation. You get a device with software that looks like it's straight from Google, so you might be tempted to expect Pixel-level performance, but the Mi A2 does not deliver that. This probably shouldn't be very surprising if you take another look at how much you paid for this handset, or even glance at its spec sheet one more time.

Then again, the Snapdragon 660 chipset that it employs is billed as upper-midrange by Qualcomm, so while it naturally can't match the 8-series SoCs in terms of raw performance, for most things in day to day use it should be pretty close. In the Mi A2, however, it isn't. Don't get us wrong, a 4-series Snapdragon would've been worse, clearly, but the 660 here is a bit of a letdown. Or who knows, maybe it's not the silicon but the software optimizations - or lack thereof. We're willing to wager that Google does a lot more of that for its devices than it or Xiaomi did for this one, which, again, might be understandable given the price.

It's up to you to decide whether you can live with this situation but do keep in mind that the Mi A2 does not feel as fast as any flagship smartphone released in the past couple of years. While that's logical for very heavy use case scenarios, it's true even in day to day operation. It's usually not much slower, sure, but then we've seen quite a few small freezes and stutters throughout the day - any day.

There's also a bit of lag when you switch between apps or sometimes even when you scroll inside an app - depending on how heavy it is, and how much stuff is going on in the background at the same time.

This is a phone that won't be a joy to use for other things while it's updating a bunch of apps, for example. But, if you do keep that in mind, also know that its light software does help it punch ever so slightly above its weight in performance when compared to other phones that cost about as much. The difference isn't huge, though, and we were honestly expecting it to be bigger given the 'holy grail' of 'stock Android' paired with very good specs for a mid-range device.

Smoothness

The Mi A2 is a decently fast and smooth handset for the price, but it can't hold a candle to any recent smoothness champion. Never mind the Pixels, pretty much any flagship device from any maker beats it. But - the Mi A2 isn't a flagship. That has to be kept in mind when evaluating it for a possible buy - if you're expecting top of the line performance and smoothness from a phone that is this cheap, then your expectations are definitely unrealistic.

Mid-range smartphones have definitely become much better today than they ever were, which means they're much more easy to recommend to people, but there are a few reasons why flagships are more expensive, and one of those has to do with how smooth of an experience some of them deliver.

That said, compared to other mid-rangers, the Mi A2 certainly holds its own in the smoothness realm and even beats some handsets running heavy skins atop the OS. Just don't expect too much of it. Micro-stutters are everywhere, small lags are something you'll encounter on a day to day basis, and scrolling sometimes feels weird because the touch latency seems to be pretty high on its display.

Battery life

The Mi A2's battery endurance seems to have improved by quite a lot after the October 2018 security update - and that's yet another reason why you should install these as soon as you get them, sometimes they pack in other optimizations too. With this in mind, we'll only discuss our experience after we applied said update.

Putting just a 3,000 mAh battery in this phone to make it this thin is one of those decisions we really can't wrap our heads around, especially since it left the Mi A2 with the biggest camera hump we've ever seen. But the small cell does do an admirable job of keeping the lights on, and the phone's numbers may positively surprise you.

In our use - with 12-16 hours off the charger in any day, while being connected to Wi-Fi for most of that and an hour or two of 4G, Bluetooth always on with an hour or two of streaming music, and location services always on - we've constantly seen at least 4 hours of screen on time. The record was 5 hours and 27 minutes with 35% battery left. Had we let it go all the way down to 0, that means we could've achieved over 7 hours of screen on time, and this is right up there with the best performers in the Android world.

Battery life snapshots from three different days

However, do note that battery stats will vary widely based on your particular usage of a device. If you are on mobile data most of the day, the numbers go down. If you're in an area with patchy signal, they'll go down even more. If you use the GPS a lot (for, say directions via Google Maps), they will fall even further. So don't take this as gospel, just note that we were happy with the Mi A2's battery life, impressed even with what it got out of just 3,000 mAh - although a 3,500 or even 4,000 mAh battery could have made this one of those phones you only need to charge once every two days. Maybe that's in store for the Mi A3.