Gadgetory

created by Xiaomi powered by Google that's the pitch for the me a1 show meas first Android one smartphone it runs vanilla software has some pretty solid hardware and an affordable price this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and let's see if this promising smartphone really lives up to the hype so yes it is Android one meaning a couple of things one it's running totally stock Android there's no me UI here as Google handles everything in the software from the design to the features as you may have guessed this makes updating the software much easier Xiaomi has promised an update to Android Oreo before the end of the year in addition to regular security updates chummy's updates to their other mio i devices can be a bit hit or miss so this is pretty much the xiaomi phone to have if you care about software updates having used me UI in the past we were at first disoriented to you stock android on a xiaomi phone but it's something that we quickly got used to there are still some things that we miss from me UI and some we don't but we are overall very happy with the me a ones software experience perhaps the largest benefit of stock android over me UI is the slightly snappier performance with the me a1 everything runs quite smoothly apps launch quickly and it just overall feels faster than what we expect at this price hardware wise we're looking at shammies favorite chip aka the snapdragon 625 as well as 4 gigabytes of ram as we expected the power-efficient 625 chip combined with the stock android software makes for some very good battery life standby times were especially good so if you're more of a passive user you should have no trouble getting a couple of days out of a single charge the battery itself is three thousand eighty milliamp hours and can be charged from zero to 100% in two hours with the included charger that's pretty good although not overly impressive speaking of things that are good but not overly impressive let's talk about the cameras the me a ones dual camera setup is one of only a few in this price segment with it you get a 12 megapixel normal lens as well as a 12 megapixel telephoto lens this means that you can get up to two times to kazoom without losing any quality we've seen manufacturers type up their cameras time and time again only to be left disappointed when actually trying them out thankfully the camera here mostly left us impressed photos taken in good lighting look great there's plenty of detail and color reproduction is aesthetically pleasing dynamic range although not the best isn't too bad either the bundled portrait mode also does a nice job at correctly isolating the subject from the background in a few cases the effect felt a bit excessive but it's about as good as you're going to get at this price we were really only disappointed when taking it out at night images taken with less than ideal lighting lack detail and can be quite noisy so overall this certainly isn't a bad package it's just one that you should manage your expectations for as you may have expected the me a1 includes a dual nano SIM card tray for our American audience please note that you'll be limited to 3G with the me a 1 as it is not intended to be used here you can substitute one of the SIM slots for a micro SD card up to 128 gigabytes this is a great option to have if you don't think that the 64 gigabytes of internal storage will be enough for all of your pictures videos and music in case you're wondering yes the me a1 does still have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack when you don't have headphones on hand the bottom firing speaker can do a nice job at giving you a fairly loud minimally distorted sound when you'd rather watch on a television the me a1 has you covered with an integrated IR blaster which basically makes it a TV remote controller we always like to see manufacturers include this really cool feature as for the rest of the design what can we say we've certainly seen it before but it's elegant and premium nonetheless combined with a really great build quality we're really impressed with how Xiaomi was able to pull this off at this price the rounded edges and sleek side profile make it nice to hold on the hand the dual cameras do protrude a bit but it's no big deal the fingerprint reader is located below and off to the center of the cameras and is functionally on par with others in this segment xiaomi has opted for capacitive navigation keys which are illuminated and right below the display that display is a 5.5 inch 1080p panel and it's pretty good overall the glass is even slightly curved near the top which is a nice premium touch sunlight readability is actually really good too which is almost never the case at this price we would have liked to see slightly better contrast and more accurate color reproduction those are really our only complaints regarding the display 15000 rupees or about $230 that's how much the Xiaomi me a won costs for that price you're getting what may just be the perfect budget smartphone there's a lot to love about the me a1 from its premium build to its very good camera the clean stock Android experience with promised updates are quite attractive to sure the design could be more original and the camera could be better in low light but at this price those are some very small compromises if you're looking for a well-rounded future proof smartphone on a budget look no further than the Xiaomi me a1 and that will be all for this video be sure to subscribe if you haven't already and hit that Bell button if you'd like to be notified when we release new videos also be sure to check out the Android Authority website is we are your source for all things Android