we tested the new smartphone under Android One Xiaomi

We Like

• The Price
• The Power
• Android One

We Do not Like

• The Size of the Double Rear Photo Sensor
• The Photos A Bit Too Smooth

Verdict

Boasting one of the most powerful mid-range processors, the Mi A2 also enjoys a very competitive price. If its design deserves to be reviewed, especially because of the photo sensor too thick in the back, it is still a smartphone pleasant to use. The shooting in full light is very correct, even if the photos often lack character.
                    

After a shattering entrance on the French market with his Mi Mix 2S his Redmi 2S and especially his Redmi Note 5 (which really conquered us) , Xiaomi recurs this month with the Mi A2 . As usual, the Chinese manufacturer offers a device with a nice design, interesting performance, and a price very aggressive compared to what usually offers the competition.

5 reasons to crack (or not) for the Xiaomi Mi A2 [19659012] 1. Yes and No for its design

The Mi A2 is a 5.99 " smartphone and enjoying an 18: 9 display (for a 1080 x 2160 resolution). screen / total size of the device is 77.4%, it is not quite a borderless device, as is however more and more the trend for one or two years. , the device is provided with a USB Type-C, but has no jack.The smartphone is happily delivered with a USB-C> Jack adapter.
What to say about the appearance and the At first glance, they are pretty good.The body of the camera is composed of aluminum which gives him a beautiful robustness while offering him a feeling of lightness once the device is in hand, its fingerprint sensor is located at the rear and correctly positioned, and the power and e volume control, all located on the right side of the phone, are discreet enough to be totally forgotten.
If its rounded corners have something to seduce, we are mostly conquered (at first, still times) by its low thickness. The device measures only 7.3 mm, one millimeter less than most competing smartphones in the same price range (Xiaomi communicates in particular by drawing a parallel with the Samsung A8, which measures , 4 mm). But there is still a problem with this idyllic painting: the protrusion of the double photo sensor located at the back of the camera . It adds a little more than 2.5 mm thick Mi A2, which makes its use on a flat surface really unpleasant. By placing it on a table and typing an SMS for example, it is clear that the device is wobbly, that it is really not for this type of use and should always be handled with two hands. While the use of a cover covering the back of the smartphone almost solves the problem (Xiaomi also offers one in the box of Mi A2), but it weighs all and makes the smartphone more unsightly. In the end, Xiaomi has certainly made great efforts on the smoothness of his new camera, but failed to properly integrate the dual photo sensor … Too bad.

2. Yes for Android One

This is without a doubt one of the highlights of this smartphone: the absence of overlay builder . If MIUI, that of Xiaomi, benefits from a no-frills environment, it can however be blamed for the lack of application drawer or the impossibility of reversing the navigation keys (defects that we had listed in our comparison on the overlay Android ). The Mi A2 frees itself from all this hbadle by offering a pure version of Google's operating system, namely Android One . This is enough to please those who are familiar with Android Stock, which can be found on the Nexus and Pixel (are there many in France to be in this second case?), Or who are accustomed to the clean environment of Motorola signed smartphones.
As a result, we find the application store at the bottom of the screen and especially a very small amount of embedded Xiaomi applications. There are only three of them: one dedicated to comments (Feedback), another devoted to file management, and one to transfer data from the smartphone to and from a computer (Mi Drop). In short, Android One is a real badet for this smartphone and Xiaomi fully understood the interest of not adding tons. ]

3. Yes for its performance

Side processor, we find a Snapdragon 660 a processor unveiled a little over a year ago by Qualcomm and found on smartphones like the Nokia 7 Plus , the R11 of Oppo, the Meizu 15 or the BlackBerry Key2 that we recently tested. The Mi A2 benefits from a fairly powerful processor, especially as the price is at the rendezvous, as we will see below. In terms of performance, therefore, we are in the presence of a mid-range smartphone: the CPU is doing the job and this is demonstrated by tests performed under Geekbench and 3DMark.

In use, The device does not suffer from any slowdown in everyday life, except in hyper-greedy games, but it was totally predictable. We had in hand the edition in 4 GB of RAM / 64 GB of storage, and the device reacted to the quarter at the least of our solicitations. Having failed to get hold of the 6GB RAM / 128GB storage version, we could not make a comparison, but it's a safe bet that this latest edition does not bring a significant gain in terms of power and responsiveness
But power, often says power consumption. As usual, we tested the device every day: a little telephony, video playback (just over half an hour a day), surfing the web, streaming music on Deezer and one hour of use of the GPS. The battery of 3010 mAh of the device is just satisfactory: after 12:00, there was only 36% battery, which ended up being totally unloading during the night. If you opt for this smartphone, take into consideration the fact that you will have to recharge it once a day, unless you intend to make a very parsimonious use of the device. The most surprising is undoubtedly that Xiaomi has integrated a more powerful battery (4000 mAh) on the little brother of the smartphone, the Mi A2 Lite. But why?

Side processor, we find a Snapdragon 660 a processor unveiled a little over a year ago by Qualcomm and found on smartphones like the Nokia 7 Plus , the R11 of Oppo, the Meizu 15 or the BlackBerry Key2 that we recently tested. The Mi A2 benefits from a fairly powerful processor, especially as the price is at the rendezvous, as we will see below. In terms of performance, therefore, we are in the presence of a mid-range smartphone: the CPU is doing the job and that is what the tests performed under Geekbench and 3DMark demonstrate.

4. Yes and no for its double photo sensor

At the back of the camera, there is a double photo sensor of 20 + 12 MP and an aperture of f / 1.75. At the front, it's a 20 MP photo sensor that comes to satisfy fans of selfies. Note in pbading that, unlike many recently released models, the Mi A2 does not have a specific notch dedicated to the front-facing photo sensor or the speaker.
What are these photo sensors worth? The double rear sensor is pretty good: the level of detail is excellent in full light, even if we can blame him for some lack of colorimetric separation. Understand that the colors are all treated on the same plane and that results in sometimes too dull photos. Nothing unacceptable, but it emerges clichés that lack a few times of character. And in low light, will you ask? As you would expect with this kind of midrange device, there is nothing exceptional. The dark areas remain in total darkness, and will need to be reworked with a retouching software to get something. On the other hand, the illuminated elements stand out more, their color level being enhanced. The result is usable shots, even if we are far from photos obtained with a Mi Mix 2S, and even further from those of a made with an S9 or iPhone 8. ]

5. Yes, for its price, even if it is more expensive in France

The Mi A2 is finally doing well because it has other badets, such as an infrared remote control or a housing that can accommodate two nano-SIM . On the other hand, one can deplore the absence of location for a microSD card, which would have made it possible to extend the storage space of the apparatus.
But where the device makes full use of it, c is by its price. At equivalent performance, it is one hundred euros cheaper than all equivalent models. The device comes in three versions: 4GB of RAM with 32GB of storage space, 4GB of RAM with 64GB of storage, and 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage. It can be regrettable that the 4 GB / 32 GB and 4 GB / 64 GB versions both display twenty euros more in France than the same models marketed in Spain. But at 269.90 euros for the first and 299.90 euros for the second, this is still a very good deal.