Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Full review: Xiaomi’s Mi A3 is confusing as hell”.
Last year, shammies me a2 was incredibly popular, especially amongst YouTube reviewers for packing a lot of value into a smartphone with brilliant software, namely Android one this year shall we released the me a3 and whilst it is better than the me a2, it also isn’t, but it Kind of is yeah. This is probably the most confusing device that I’ve ever looked at. The most controversial thing on this phone is that it drops the IPS 1080p panel. It’S actually quite a good panel from last year’s phone and puts in least 720p AMOLED, and they did this to get an in display fingerprint scanner, or at least it seems, which is neither here nor there, but we’ll get to that in a second. So to get to that, they needed to put an AMOLED panel in the phone so that you can actually use the sensor, but because the prices of this phone is pretty low, they needed to get a cheaper panel, so they swapped for a 720p one and well It kind of leaves the display feeling a little bit blurry, especially if you’re used to 1080p or bigger screens, especially as this is a 6 inch phone as well with a 720p display.
It just doesn’t quite seem right and, if you’re used to those sharper displays, it’s almost going to look like your eyes are out of focus when viewing small tanks, which is a bit annoying. But what’s even more annoying. Is that the reason they did this they’re in display a fingerprint scanner is really slow and really unreliable? Now those are two traits that I wouldn’t like to apply to a fingerprint scanner, especially as last year’s me aides, who had a fantastic brayer placed capacitive unit, and this one under the display just isn’t cutting it. I feel like what they tried to do here is implement a feature of a high-end smartphone, but because they didn’t have the budget for that they kind of skimmed. In other areas that were very important. I mean the screen is arguably one of the most important things in its hi, a smartphone they skimped on that to implement a feature that doesn’t work very well so yeah. That is a bit of a compromise. Otherwise, the displays fairly good colors a punchy, gets fairly bright, although not the brightest in direct sunlight, which is a characteristic of OLED.
They typically get very bright, and this one just doesn’t seem to, and I feel like. Yes, you can drop down to 1080p at this size, but anything below that just feels a little bit muddy. On the contrary, the thing is built fairly well, the buttons are fairly solid, they’re not incredibly loose in the phone it’s made of glass. It’S got an designed to it. The flash is kind of behind the glass flush with the design, so it doesn’t stick out as much as that. Pretty large camera bump on the back, which now has three cameras, not just two, so that is an improvement as well.
The front has a water, droplet style notch, which some will hate. I don’t mind it personally, and the bezels are fairly small, although not the smallest on a mid-range smartphone. So, overall, it’s not looking too bad for the design. It feels very well built, doesn’t feel ratalie at all and is going to fit in with a lot of mid-range smartphones, even though this one is more towards the budget side.
In fact, I’d say the build quality is probably one of its biggest improvements over the me. A to of last year, but for me that doesn’t make up for the fact that we don’t have NFC on this phone, which is annoying because an Android one phone I’d expect to have NFC, because of course, one of the biggest Google services is google pane. We can’t use that on this phone and next we don’t have wireless charging despite having a glass back now. This is something I could kind of get over, but at the same time, one of the reasons you use a glass back design is so you can enable wireless charging and that’s not here, which is kind of annoying, but back to the plus side, they brought back Micro SD, dual SIM, meaning that you can fill all three of those cards and they’re all usable at the same time, which is brilliant. It’S something! I really liked about the me a to light that the me a two didn’t have and now it’s back on the me a three so thumbs up for that and we get a headphone port remember last year the meanie didn’t have a headphone port, but the me A light did well on this version.
The me three: we get the headphone port again and I’m gon na talk about the audio experience really quickly, the headphone port, very clear, very good piece of equipment. But what’s better is the speaker now it’s not stereo, it’s not from firing, even it’s a mono speaker at the bottom, which you kind of expect to be pretty poor, but this is probably the best implementation of a mono bottom firing speaker that I’ve ever seen on A smartphone it is brilliant. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not going to beat those stereo front firing speakers setups, but considering what it is and in a smartphone of this price, it’s very impressive, but then it comes back to the fact that we get a very, very incremental improvement in performance With the snapdragon 665 this year, with four gigabytes of RAM and either 64 or 128 gigabytes of storage, I personally think there should have been a six gigabyte of RAM model. I don’t know if that’s just me, but with 100 twenty-eight gigabytes of storage. I expect that six gig around, even if the price goes up just a little bit to compensate for that.
I feel like it should have been an option and I would have liked to see the Snapdragon 670 here. The 665 is just a little bit. I don’t know it doesn’t quite work for me, especially considering that you can pick up a used me a for a lot cheaper and get very similar performance. However, jumping back to the software Google’s Android one is brilliant.
Now it’s not gon na be the most feature pad because it is stock, but that has a plus to it, because there’s not going to be any extra bloat to bog down the phone going into the future and talking of longevity we’re gon na get security. Update software updates and more likely Android q in the future as well, which is something that a lot of kind of cheaper phones don’t get. They don’t get those extra updates, because their software is so bogged down that the manufacturers would have to create a whole new software just to run on that phone. I’Ve talked about the ifs and buts, but the rest of it is kind of math. It’S kind of okay, the rest of the smartphone is what I would call a safe bet. The camera is pretty good.
We now get an ultra wide lens which I really like, but when it comes to the processing, it’s a little bit heavy on the saturation and the HDR effects, which makes everything look just a little bit fake and then in low-light. It kind of stumbles to it. To a crawl, basically, even though it takes a long time to process those images and then when you go over to the video side, the video actually looks pretty good and it compensates with light well, and it focuses well, but for some reason it’s just so shaky There isn’t any kind of stabilization here or if there is it’s, not working very well and I feel like when people are using their smartphone they’re, not exactly holding their phone very steady because a very light and small piece of equipment so yeah.
I think the video could probably use some work, especially the slow motion, which seems to degrade a lot in quality selfies. On the other hand, look pretty good, actually 32 megapixels an awful lot of pixels to pack into a small front-facing camera. This one seems to work.
Well and colors, sharpness, dynamic range. Everything seems to work pretty well on that battery life is good, don’t get me wrong, but it is a four thousand milliamp hour battery and it’s a 720p display, so you’d expect kind of more than just a good battery life and, along with that, we only get A 10 watt charging brick in the box, despite the fact that it is able to push 18 watts. It’S fast charging port. We don’t get wireless charging or anything like that. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag like yeah, so you’re gon na get good battery life, but it’s not as good as it could have been. I feel for 200 euros. This phone is pretty confusing. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent phone and I’d recommend this to someone if they wanted specifically what this phone is offering.
But the problem with that is that you could pony up just a little bit more money or maybe 50 % more money, but we won’t talk about that and get the me ninety, which i think is a much better value for money. Yes, this thing is much cheaper, but it does follow the rules of diminishing returns. You spend so little and get things that don’t quite work properly. The first point of contact with your phone is unlocking it and if it’s slow, then it’s not going to make the rest of the phone feel much better.
Is it especially when you consider the unlocking your phone is? Probably the thing you do with your phone? Most often in the day, along with the fact that reading fine text was just a little bit off, like you, couldn’t quite put your finger on what was wrong and it turned out. It was actually just the fact that it’s a lower resolution display and the fact that the battery life just isn’t quite where I would expect it to be, considering the fact that it has a massive battery for its screen, size and charmese kind of confusing me here, Because all of that put aside, there is a brilliant smartphone, underneath the audio situation is brilliant. The fact that you get all that expansion, the SIM slots and everything like that – that’s really good as well. The software is fantastic, the cameras, alright, it’s an incredibly confusing phone and I can see what Charlie was trying to do here is trying to target those people who want to buy flagships.
But that was the problem, because this isn’t a flagship and he wait. That’S been about it from me. Thank you all so much for watching and please do check out the link in the video description to the full version of what I was talking about today. Please do like comment and subscribe if you’re new around here to never miss a video like this one.
I’Ve been Ryan Thomas with Android authority and I’ll see you later. Peace. .