The Xiaomi Mi A3 is a safe bet for those looking for a cheap and cheerful smartphone. At just over $249.99, it sits with the Galaxy M20 and Nokia 7.1 — yet handily beats them in key areas such as battery life and camera versatility. Building on the well-regarded Mi A2, the Mi A3 ups the build quality, camera, and battery game, sacrificing its feature set and price-to-performance ratio.
Design
Xiaomi adopted the glass-sandwich formula with shiny metal rails surrounding the Mi A3, which makes the phone feel far more expensive than it actually is. The camera bump has expanded to include a third sensor, and the flash now resides just outside of the camera assembly, sitting flush underneath the rear glass. That curved rear glass also presents too much text and branding in my opinion, though you won’t be looking at the back most of the time.
Both the volume rocker and power button reside on the right side, with the dual SIM/microSD card tray on the left. The headphone port and IR blaster sit on the top, and the USB-C port and speaker grille are on the bottom. The front is pretty clean with thin bezels, the 6.01-inch display, a waterdrop notch, and a selfie camera, fitting into the budget space nicely.
There are three colors: Not Just Blue, More Than White, and Kind Of Gray. The Kind Of Gray that I have feels executive and smart, while the others are more fun and fit more in line with what we’re seeing from flagship manufacturers. The device itself is easy to hold thanks to its narrow design, although it’ll slip off a table if you’re not careful because the back glass, whilst comfortable, is incredibly slippery. The volume rocker and power button are both tactile and solid, if the smallest amount rattly.
Display
Xiaomi opted to drop the Full HD+ IPS LCD display from the Mi A2 for an HD+ AMOLED that comes in at just 286ppi. My thoughts on this are mixed, but I lean towards the side of agreeing with their decision. Whilst the sharpness takes a noticeable hit on the 6.01-inch screen, the better contrast, color depth, and saturation of the AMOLED all outweigh those missing pixels for me. The lower resolution panel also benefits the Mi A3’s battery life, which was unsurprisingly good.
The in-display fingerprint scanner on my Xiaomi Mi A3 review unit was painfully slow. Xiaomi probably included the feature to show that the Mi A3 could keep up with premium devices, but only to its detriment. Not only is this scanner slow, but it’s also pretty unreliable. It was often far quicker and easier to enter my pin code
Performance
Day-to-day performance is adequate for those to whom this phone is marketed. Browsing social media, watching YouTube videos, and shopping on the likes of Amazon and eBay are all smooth on this device. With a mid-range chip, I expected mid-range performance, and that’s exactly what I got.
One of the areas that was noticeably slow, however, was the camera app. Switching modes and taking photos was pretty slow, making it hard to get the shot I wanted if I was in a dash or if I had a moving subject.
Battery
When you consider the low-resolution screen, large battery, and modern SoC, it’s not difficult to see why the Mi A3 offers good battery life. I easily got a full day of usage with this phone, using it mostly for browsing social media and watching YouTube videos.
The charging tech in this phone is about what we’d expect. Almost every phone these days has some form of fast charging, and the Xiaomi Mi A3 supports up to 18W charging. In the box, you get a 10W brick, so you are limited. You can buy a separate 18W charger should you find it a necessity.
Camera
Mi A3’s camera setup, considering the cost of the phone. We get a wide-angle lens, which is super handy for tight spots and unique angles, along with the standard and depth sensors. Results are impressive for the price, but nothing mind-blowing. The Mi 9T, which is only a bit pricier, adds a telephoto for even more flexibility.
This camera does like to emphasize certain colors in any given image. It’s not necessarily life-like or natural looking, but that arguably makes for a more enjoyable viewing experience.
The HDR is pretty good when you consider how affordable the phone is, though most phones sport good HDR these days. I found that shooting in harsh sunlight wasn’t an issue for the Mi A3, where last year’s phone would have stumbled.
Night-time shooting and low-light photography were tricky for the modest Mi A3. The device struggled with noise and with processing multiple exposures. I found loss in clarity, sharpness, and detail to be particular issues. Moreover, the night shooting mode took its sweet time to process my images.
Video, at 4K 30fps, isn’t amazing on the Mi A3. Image stabilization leaves footage pretty shaky if you’re walking or running while taking video. The change in exposure between bright and dark environments was pretty quick. The sharpness and quality of the video itself is pretty good in 4K, but the slow motion at 240fps loses an awful lot of visual fidelity.
Software
The Mi A3 runs Google’s Android One software, which includes faster updates and longer support, but misses out on custom apps and extra features. Since having a basic, but safe set of hardware requires a clean and smooth piece of software, Android One is a good match for the hardware.
Android 9 Pie is the platform underneath Android One, but Xiaomi promised Mi A3 users will get the Android 10 update from February 2020. The use of this software also bodes well for longevity, as a less-bloated OS is less likely to slow down over time.
Should you buy
The Mi A3 at $249.99 this makes it a pretty good value smartphone. We get physical features like an IR-blaster, wide-angle camera, headphone port, and in-display fingerprint scanner all for a fraction of the cost of flagship phones.
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