Xiaomi, a company that has a near 17 percent market share in India, just announced a new Android flagship smartphone called the Mi A1. The smartphone is largely focused around catering to the Indian market. The device carries the tagline “created by Xiaomi, powered by Google.”
The smartphone boasts a 5.5-inch 1080p display, a metal body, and a dual-camera system that also includes a secondary telephoto lens for 2x zooming, as well as portraits with shallow depth of field. Sounds familiar? Well Xiaomi isn’t hiding the fact that it’s similar to the iPhone 7 Plus. Take a look at this tweet:
#MiA1 is similar to a DSLR that fits in your pocket with both 12MP Telephoto lens + 12MP Wide Angle lens that is similar to iPhone 7 Plus! pic.twitter.com/r8xQZfDkm4
— Xiaomi (@Xiaomi) September 5, 2017
The Mi A1 features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 processor, which offers a great balance for performance and battery life. It includes a 3080mAh battery as well. To charge the phone, you would be using the USB-C cable paired up with a custom-designed 380V charger catered to handle India’s power spikes.
So what’s this “powered by Google” all about? Here’s where things get a little interesting. Isntead of running Xiaomi’s own MIUI layer, the phone runs stock Android software, and is part of Android One program.
