Xiaomi Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite hands-on review

Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite hands-on

We've seen the Xiaomi Mi A2 before the announcement, as it was first made official in China under a different name - Mi 6X. The same goes for the Mi A2 Lite, which was introduced in China as Redmi 6 Pro. Still, we found the device to bring some surprises at today's event.

The Mi A2 Lite highlight feature is its notched screen with minimal bezels. It's 5.84" in diagonal and with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,280 pixels or 432ppi. That's pretty much the same screen we saw on the Huawei P20 Lite, but we will be able to confirm this once we get a chance to review it.

Anyway, the screen occupies most of the front, looks trendy and cool, with tiny bezels, and the 19:9 aspect is one of the most modern things one could get today. The notch is the other, though the jury is still out on its coolness. But to get this type of screen on a €150 phone, we'd say it's impressive no matter how you look at it.

And the display looks great with high brightness and contrast, lively and punchy colors. Inside the display notch are the earpiece grille, the 5MP selfie camera and a couple of sensors. The front shooter isn't as impressive as on the Mi A2, but it still does HDR and can do 1080p videos. Obviously, the premium selfie experience was reserved for the more expensive phone - the Mi A2.

There are no buttons at the front - the Android will offer you virtual ones. You can hide those in some apps as well and use the entire screen area for yourself.

Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite

The back of the Mi A2 Lite is done in the spirit of the older Redmi phones instead of the Mi A1 and A2. It's not a single piece of metal with embedded antennas, but instead, the aluminum ends on plastic strips around the top and bottom. Those hide all the Mi A2 Lite antennas, and in the meantime don't add complexity to the design and its production.

Then, also at the back, is another vertical dual-camera setup, and nearby is also the fingerprint scanner. The camera on the back is similar to what we saw on the most recent Redmi Note 5 models - a 12MP sensor behind f/2.2 lens with phase-detection autofocus, and a 5MP secondary cam for depth information for the portrait shots. There is no 4K video recording, but the 1080p has gyro-based EIS, which is nice.

And here is some good news - the Mi A2 Lite has both a microSD slot and a 3.5mm audio jack. Both of those were missing on the Mi A2 and we are happy to get them in the Lite model.

The phone feels great in hand and looks as modern as the Mi A2, some might consider it even fresher. We don't mind the metal and plastic combo at the back and we think most of the users will like both the looks and the grip.

The Mi A2 Lite runs on the still popular Snapdragon 625 chip, which has an octa-core Cortex-A53 processor and Adreno 506 GPU. It might be an aging SoC, but it has aged so well that Qualcomm has pretty much rebranded it as Snapdragon 450 with some minor changes. It's still working very well underneath a 1080p screen and we are sure it will be up for the job for the next two years. And this chip coupled with the 4,000 mAh battery should do for some remarkable battery life.

Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite

Finally, the Mi A2 Lite also benefits from Android One, which means the most recent Android 8.1 Oreo is available and it's free of bloatware. Once again, we hope this time Xiaomi and Google deliver on the promised timely updates for the next 24 months to come.