Xiaomi Mi A2 Unboxing & Hands On Review

 So it was really on the fence as towhether it will pick up one of these this of is Xiaomi's Mi A2 andit's exactly the same hardware as the me 6x that I reviewed so I'm not going tobe in this video covering the hardware in detail unlike I do with that videoplease refer to that video if you want more in-depth information and detailabout the actual hard way because I'm not gonna be like those our 1 plus 6 and iPhone guys that when there's a new color they review the whole phone allover again 10 15 minute video just for a new color as if anything house changesand it's the same case here so nothing else has changed they didn't decide tochange their mind Xiaomi and go oh hang on let's give them me a to a microSD card slot and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack now they didn't do thatso the specs you're probably familiar with them if you see my 6 X videosnapdragon 660 which is a mid-range chipset and it does perform really quitewell am i testing it's a good chipset I do like it we've got to the dual camerason the rear so one is 12 megapixels the other is 20 now that 20 megapixel cameradoes do some pixel binning with the low-light photos and it's a basicallythey can auto detect system that halves it up so when it detects the camera bothof the cameras on the rare that it's low-light scenario then it will switchto that 20 megapixel sensor selfie camera the front is also 20 megapixel solet's check out here the me a 2 with Android one so I have here the


globalversion it is factory sealed I got this one from Gear Vita which is a newChinese retailer that I am testing out and they shipped this one here with theHL so that's why I got it quite quick it's actually being sold locally andwill be out on I think it's the 6 things this month here in Spain you can pick itup and also in India it's gonna be out on the 16th my version is the 4gigabytes of RAM 64 gigabyte ROM so remember to choose wisely depending onwhat kind of use you have of your phone because if you're someone that has ahuge music collection remember no expandable storage on thisso we have right here at the top I know from experience from the 6x that this isa case that it will come with and there's a user guide the adapter fortype C 2 3 five millimeter headphone jack and thenthe some trade tool so it will take two nano Sims and the TPU case they give youright here which is one of those of transparent style gray ones and it doesdo the job and it's good to see that a lot of manufacturers are now puttingcases in the box with these phones that are very easy to scratch and damage sothat we have the phone right there of course type seek cover and then ourcharger now this of course is an EU charger because I have the globalversion and it is the European version now the maximum output of this is 5volts 2 amps so it's not actually using Qualcomm quick charge 3 but in myexperience with the 6x it will fully charge the phone in just over two hoursso it's still very very quick now the phone in he has a 3000mAh battery which is rather small they should have gone with4000 mAh one if you ask me but it is light only 168 grams so the A2 is a thin mobilephone you can see right here at 7.5 millimeters but it has this hideousmassive camera bump that sticks out an extra couple of millimeters bringing thethickness up

 if you measure it with that to 9 millimeters next to the redmi note5 it's very noticeable the difference there with those cameras how much itactually sticks out on the 6x now with the redmi note 5 we've got at the tophere plastic but got antenna lines on this one and the unibody build is of amuch higher standard much better quality metal buttons on the right-hand sidethat do not rail and and they have a good feel to them the front camera withan F 2.0 aperture 20 megapixels this one here does actually take your selfieshots with the blurred background so the bokeh effect portrait mode if you willand it does a pretty good job of stitching that up and there is also aselfie flash which is located just here then down the bottom you can just makeout the antenna lines here a little bit more prominent on the other colors butwhat the black you don't see it as much we've got to what looks like twoloudspeakers but in fact just one

so the loudspeaker microphone and then ofcourse the type C port and the only physical difference from this to the 66I reviewed from looking on the outside is this right here it's gonnathey Android one on the back so in hand the phone feels good it's a five pointnine nine inch screen that they do have on this which of course is 18 by 9 or 2by 1 aspect ratio so this cover on the front that's just of course for transitso this green star not going to get damaged or anything like that so youjust have to pull this off and I may as well show you what it looks like in thecase because I know a lot of people don't actually do this so you get a bitof a lip around here so it is going to cover the screen so if you put itfacedown the screen then should not get scratched and you'll see that it is alsocovering up that camera so that's also giving that some added protection thereall and of course the case fits perfectly it's coming from themanufacturer you've got the cutouts there for all theports and everything and it's not bad for a freebie or should I say anincluded case oh and that that user guide if you're a wondering yes it's allin English even that's a Chinese phone at the top you'll find a secondarymicrophone and yes there is an IR transmitter so at least they did keepone thing so powering it up now for the first time of course we get the Androidone boot screen haptic feedback of course there is a haptic motor in thereand we just have to go through our standard setup so the screen is full HDplus of course because it's like a 1080p screen but just stretched out a littlebit taller here so this is just like a stock Android setup because that'sexactly what it is running stock Android like those other budget phones that Isometimes review but I'll skip this part here and we'll go straight into the romand so here we go the UI stock Android


completely stocks so this is the show memobile to get for people that could never stand me why you didn't like itand ultimate I never liked me UI in the beginning and I've learned to like itI've gotten used to and I like some of the features and extras it does have acourse that you're gonna be missing now with this so we'll have a look at thestock apps we have installed so Google of course of Kramden quite a few thingsthere Xiaomi has two apps so we've got me stormy community and really that isabout it now they could have probably lighten this up a little but really thisis not bad at all now what I thought would be interestinga little bit different was to take a look more at the differences betweenstock Android and say anyway on this same exact screen herenow you notice straight away that the calibration of these two panels is verydifferent so out of the box I'm gonna have to go with Google with Androidstock Android the way they've calibrated the screen here seems a lot better to mebecause this is the default on standard and then under standard the screen looksa little bit more correct but out of the boxI think it's on automatic contrast and it always tends to have a blue tint toit hopefully you can see that coming throughbut one thing you are missing that I do particularly like here is of courseyou've got this customization here you can tweak the colors to your ownpreference with stock Android you're missing out on that and you're not goingto get that unfortunately this is just one of those things you need to bear inmind between the two of operating systems having the stock and in adifferent custom skin on there with me or I now the speed of them and have tocomment that so far and it seems a little bit faster on stock Android I'dsay just some of the animations going through things now I'm not gonnaactually do one of those speed test things because I just find them reallyirritating to be honest those kind of videos I know I've done them in


the pastbut we notice too with the cameras they are almost the same exact application sowhen I launch them here and you see actually look at me who I came up fasterthey are very similar because they obviously had to go with this becausethat's the camera software they're tweaking the optimization that show mehave done but when you have a look at the settings menu this is where younotice some differences so under settings here just to show you this thatwe've got stock camera setup with the ceiling so stock Android settings andthen it's still the me UI of course that you'd expect so you've got the sameoptions more or less but there's a couple of things that are missing likethe scan the QR codes doesn't seem to be on there if you needed that of coursethere's apps on AB store you can use for those you're not missing out on anythingthere but even the pocket mode things like thatyou've got the watermark of course if you want to put that on there that'ssomething that shown me is quite fond of because these cameras they are quitegood cameras really for this type of phone so that is why they do that thereso a lot of those options there they're exactly the same now in terms of thevideo this is one I'm interested in I'm going to have to test this out so if Imove over now into the video mode and just go through this now on to theoptions you see we're going to get the same here so image stabilization videoquality 4k Ultra HD of course image stabilization enabled it's enabled hereas well and this is the same exact thing no actually it's not on this model the4k that's because it's just not enabled on the readme five plus if I was lookingat the 6s X sorry we would have then of course 4k of course the obvious thedifference is here with the toggles at the top your notifications and thingsare gonna look a lot different different there so show me has crammed in moretoggles so you can get to them a lot quicker there and control the autobrightness there from the screen there with just the setting and you can seehere of course that


yeah you have to fit them in we have to swipe to the sidethere and instead of differences like this that are really just very minor ofcourse now one thing it is missing from the move to stock Android is that wedon't have the full screen just your mode so somehow they couldn't implementthat or they didn't want to which is the shame so we're always going to have touse the navigation keys which is perfectly fine that's what every otherphone normally has anyway but I'm so used to gestures it would be nice toactually see that there so what we do have just under the normal gestures asyour typical one here so double tapping the power button will launch the cameraand that's the only one we've got so there are some good news and bad newsfor Netflix lovers out there so yes it's on the Play Store yes you can install itbut it's only in standard definition no HD and that is because shell me is stillonly supporting Widevine level three so what does this jargon mean well if thiswas level one that would mean Netflix in HD Full HD but there is a welcomechanged here that I did half expect and then as we've got full proper treblesupport so this is great if you wanted to later on flash your arm over then youshould be able to do this unless of course the bootloader is locked well itwill be locked and you'll have to apply to unlock it with show me which isnormally the case but they're really tightening down and changing on that sothat may possibly change in the future now me remote is on there which is goodof course that allows us to take a bunch of that ionstransmitter that I showed you at the beginning of the video and why not let'stake a peek at the screen in closer detail so the gamma is pretty muchspot-on 2.0 it should be around 2.2 but hey it's not too far off so it's not badand this of course is just a phone with an IPS panel and the viewing angles wellyou can see them here it does shift out and darken a little bit at the sight asyou'd expect it's an IPS panel there's no screen protector on this it does notcome with one pre-applied which a lot of the Chinese tech does


andsome real-world photos so the screen does look really quite good there's nocomplaints from me whatsoever with this panel I think if I was being reallyreally fast he may be too sad don't particularly like the rounded cornersthat much but apart from that this is a really it's a fantastic screen for theprice of this phone and to to school here so 130,000 this is not bad at allfor a snapdragon 660 and this is quite a bit faster than the old model so the a1has the snapdragon 6 to 5 and they get to approximately 80 to 75 maybe a littlebit higher thousands and points so this is about fifty to forty thousand higherand you do notice this leap in performance it's quite a bump up and thecameras of course was Wow are a lot better on this particular model internalstorage speeds MMC 5.1 spec very good here so sequential read of 276 writesalmost 200 and good random reads and writes this is not going to bebottlenecking there's mobile at all so I went out for a little walk on the streetand had a look at the GPS and it's working perfectly fine just like the 6xso it's between 3 to 4 meters the accuracy and 4G speeds good results hereso 30 megabits per second download 18 upload no problems with the signalstrength the range as well and all that with wireless is also perfectly fineexactly the same here as expected same hardware as the 6x so around 250megabits per second is the maximum you're gonna get on wireless AC is 5 Gband so we just got the one nailed speaker as I pointed out at the start ofthe video which is just on the bottom there no secondary loudspeakerthe front-facing one the likes you get on other mobile phones like my me max tothe me max three but the loudspeaker does sound good I'll give your sample ofit now so I bout to head out now take somephotos some video as well now open camera with 4k electronic imagestabilization is working because it does have you can see right here legacy atleast it's something it's not full support but legacy our camera API tosupport so I'm not showing you a bunch of fingerprints and smudges on the rearno but that's just what happens what hoodoo wanted to show you is thefingerprint read on the back okay just to mention it that it works flawlesslysuper quick to unlock exactly like all the other Xiaomi phones since the redminote 3 was it i think that i started to really improve the fingerprint readersand no problems it's so fast and works every single time but we don't have anyface unlocking for some reason with this model you get it on the 6xbut maybe Google just didn't want them to have it because it's not so secure sothis is a sample from the front-facing camera get 1080p maxexactly like the 6x the quality is decent it's good for the priceno complaints the audio as well seems to be perfectly fine so let's take a looknow at the rear cameras so this is 4k with this stock app even though I dohave the image stabilization enabled it doesn't seem to really do anything orwork at all so it's a little shaky the footage but it is sharp the quality isgood it's just that stability but luckily there is a solution to this andjust like there meet 6x and that is to use open camera so you can see straightaway the massive difference open camera makes with electronic imagestabilization the current bitrate is 16 megabits per second if you hold it withtwo hands really still it looks like it is almost on a tripod or you're usingsome sort of gimbal and just panning around here and I will walk down thesesteps just to show you that this stabilization is very very good and it'salmost like the Google pixel you see how steady that is and how smooth so front-facing camera in low-light youcan see there's lots of grain and not a very good image notice is to be expectedvery difficult conditions I will turn on that front LED flash as well now you seethat's marginally better but now my face is kind of orange like an orangenow sample of low-light video and you can see the focus does start to actuallyhunt so it's pulsing it out the whole time there's one problem that it doeshave here there's quite a lot of grain and overall the image actually looks alot brighter than what it actually really is so there we go guys the me a2 is bothtwo steps forward one step back because compared to the me a 1 we've lost a fewfeatures here we'll lost a 3.5


millimeter headphone jack and themicroSD card which is a real shame and I also feel that Xiaomi could have made itabout a millimeter thicker and they could have added a four thousandmilliamp hour battery would have been a little bit better just like the Rubynote 5 now apart from that if you don't like me UI then this is clearly thephone to go for but not only that it has fantastic cameras for the price andcategory of this phone so it's selling for around two hundred and twenty nineus at the moment at the time of this video and normally that limits you tothose mediatek phones out there and it's not a wonderful process and normallythey have really bad cameras on them so you're getting something just so muchbetter if you're someone that does not like these custom Chinese launchesyou're worried about Chinese firmwares you want the latest updates that comethrough this is meant to get Android P Android 9 as soon as it comes out itssupposed to be one of the first devices according to Google at the pressconference I was at so we'll see what happens there so it's going to get theupdates quick and overall the performance is really good now I haven'tshown you any gaming so check out my me 6x for that and also check out mycomparisons for the camera so you want to compare the ribbing Note 5 to thisbasically this exact same camera then check out my also comparison of thatstraight up here and please do check my full review of the me 6x and that coversa lot more detail but overall if you want stock Android you want basically aGoogle pixel on a budget this is the phone to go for thank you so much forwatching and I do hope to see you back in the channel bye for now