Introduction
Xiaomi Mi A1 was quite the booster for the whole Android One program and paved the way for a fruitful partnership between Xiaomi and Google. The Mi A2 was a significant but controversial upgrade that eventually cemented the Mi A1 as the ultimate deal. And now, the Mi A3 is trying to right all the wrongs and reach for the top once again.
The Android purists can now enjoy the vanilla Google experience on a Super AMOLED screen. There is new Snapdragon chipset promising blazing-fast gaming performance. Then a trending triple-camera should allow you to snap some great pictures day and night. And finally, the large 4,030 mAh battery inside should help you do all these things for many, many hours on.
The Xiaomi Mi A3 introduces a new glass design, departure from the sturdy but somewhat outdated metal shells. And the Mi A3 still likes to keep it as safe as possible as evident by the choice of Gorilla Glass 5 for both the front and the back.
The camera is probably the most interesting new bit, now featuring a 48MP primary shooter and an 8MP ultrawide-angle snapper. The third eye is a depth sensor, which may seem useless, but we are always in for a surprise in them portraits.
Before we put the Mi A3 through its paces, let's take a deep dive into the specs sheet.
Xiaomi Mi A3 specs
Xiaomi is indeed righting those wrongs by bringing the audio jack back! And the microSD slot! And FM radio! And the larger battery is indeed a wish come true.
The elephant in the room, the 720p screen, definitely stands out and not in a good way. It's been a while since we worked on such a low-res screen, let alone a PenTile AMOLED. But let's stay positive and give it a fair chance, shall we?
Unboxing the Xiaomi Mi A3
The Mi A3 retail box contains what you'd expect from a mid-ranger's bundle - a USB-C cable, a 10W charger, and inside the paper compartment there is a dark gray silicone case.
It's worth noting that while the Mi A3 supports 18W (Quick Charge 3.0), Xiaomi is not shipping the phone with a QC3-compatible charger. Those are not that expensive anymore, though, so it's not that of a biggie.
A lot of Chinese phones usually have a screen protector pre-applied in the factory but the Mi A3 is not among those. It does come with Gorilla Glass 5 protection on both sides and we can understand why Xiaomi decided against a having a protector.
Design
The Xiaomi Mi A3 is your typical glass-sandwich smartphone with an aluminum frame, well protected thanks to the two Gorilla Glass 5 pieces. And while it looks like any other device of such build, the Mi A3 is a major Mi 9 lookalike. Those are enough reasons to call it of premium looks and build, even though its price suggests otherwise.
So, the front is the place for the Mi A3's most controversial feature - the Super AMOLED screen of HD+ resolution and a waterdrop-like notch. The panel has curved corners, as usual, but the thing is completely flat, and we like it this way better.
The notch houses the new 32MP selfies camera, while the tiny top bezel has a grille for the earpiece at the center and a couple of invisible sensors on the left.
We will discuss the HD screen soon, but at first glance the colors look lively and the contrast seems excellent. But we noticed some pixelization on solid backgrounds and all text is jagged because of the PenTile matrix arrangement.
Finally, the chin is unusually big, especially for an OLED panel, but we can live with that on a cheap phone. At least everything is protected by a Gorilla Glass 5 and we always appreciate a high-end glass on a budget handset.
And before we flip the Mi A3, there is one premium feature at the front that is easy to miss - the under-screen fingerprint scanner. It seems to be identical to the optical one we experience on the Mi 9T, meaning it is almost as responsive and fast as a conventional one. The sensor lights up the moment you touch the screen; it scans your finger and unlocks in an instant.
The back also uses a Gorilla Glass 5, but this time around it's bent towards its edges. Having such subtle curves is a familiar design concept - one that makes the Mi A3 look and feel slimmer than it actually is, but this also takes a huge toll on the grip.
The triple camera is humping quite a lot at the top left corner. It contains the 8MP wide-angle shooter, the 48MP primary snapper, and the 2MP depth sensor. The single LED flash is flush outside of this formation. Quite expectedly such a big hump makes the A3 wobble quite a lot when left on a flat surface, but that's the occupational hazard we guess.
The back of the Mi A3 is yet another reminder of the Mi 9. The Mi A3 is available in these coolly named hues - Kind of Gray, Not just Blue, and More than White. Remind you of some Pixels, maybe?
We have the Not just Blue one and it's quite stunning when the glass is not covered in fingerprints (very rarely). The glass may be dark bluish, but it catches and reflects light in different ways, and also it is one big smudgy mirror. And we have to agree with Xiaomi, it's hard to name these mesmerizing colors and the Not just Blue suits this one a lot (despite being a clear nod to Google's names for the Pixel colors).
The metal frame is also painted in Not just Blue and has a very glossy finish. It is also quite curved, so abandon all hopes for a good grip on the Mi A3. If you don't use a case, then using the A3 with extreme caution is highly advised.
The hybrid SIM slot is on the left of the said frame, and it can either take two nano-SIM cards, or one SIM and one microSD. Xiaomi has indeed listened to the complaint and it brought back the memory expansion slot.
The top of the frame has a couple of surprises, too. The 3.5mm audio jack makes a return and there is also an IR blaster next to it.
The bottom has a single loudspeaker, the mouthpiece, and a USB-C port.
The Mi A3 measures 153.5 x 71.9 x 8.5 mm, which is 5mm shorter and 3mm narrower than the Mi A2, which also had a 6" display but one of a different aspect ratio and thicker bezels. The A3 weighs 174g, about 8g heavier than the Mi A2 and A1.
The Mi A3 is a great-looking smartphone with premium and solid build, but almost non-existent grip. That's the widespread mantra even among the flagships though, so we can't really blame Xiaomi for following the current trends and bringing what's considered premium.
We'd suggest grabbing a thin transparent case that will solve the grip issues, while preserving the captivating looks.
Display
Let's start with some good news - Xiaomi has switched to Samsung-made AMOLED panel for the Mi A3. The Mi A1 and Mi A2 both had IPS LCD screens, which were good, but not OLED good.
So, did we notice pixelization? Yes, especially on solid colored backgrounds. What about jagged text? All the time? Are those deal-breakers? It depends!
Indeed, the low-res AMOLED suffers because of the PenTile matrix, but it's quite easy to get used to not see the tiny spikes on the letters and the dotted backgrounds. We are not saying you have to do it at all costs, but you really can. And then you can reap the benefits of the lower 720p resolution such as flagship-grade gaming performance across all modern games. How about that?
We are not sure why Xiaomi opted for a 720p display, but by doing so it made the Mi A3 a gaming phone on the budget. And we can very well live with that.
The screen has a decent brightness for an OLED panel of 363 nits. Unfortunately, the Mi A3 runs vanilla Android instead of MIUI (like its Mi CC9e doppelganger) and this means it lacks High Brightness Mode. So, even in the brightest of days, the Mi A3 won't light up more than 363 nits, not even in Auto Brightness mode.
The minimum brightness we measured was 14.9 nits - which is uncomfortably bright. It's quite disappointing to see such result as almost all phones we have tested in recent years go as low as 1-4 nits.
Xiaomi is promising 102.7% coverage for the NTSC color gamut and we can confirm this. The color accuracy, however, isn't that splendid with an average deltaE of 4.9. Most of the blue hues we measured turned out punchier than they should be, and thus all whites and grays have a minor bluish tint, but still, it's a good enough presentation.
Battery life
The Xiaomi Mi A3 is the first A-series specimen to be powered by a 4,030mAh Li-ion battery, about 35% larger than the cells inside the Mi A1 and A2.
The Mi A3 supports Quick Charge 3.0 and if you use a compatible 18W charger, it will fill about 45% of a depleted battery in 30 mins. A full charge would require about 100 mins.
The Mi A3 ships with a 10W charger though and it recharges from 0 to 28% in 30 mins, while a full charge takes about 150 mins.
The Mi A3 posted a top-notch endurance rating of 101 hours and great scores across the board. The screen-on times are outstanding - we measured 12 and a half hours runtime in our web browsing test and north of 21 hours in our video playback test.
The standby performance was about the average, not as great as on MIUI-booting phones as those have some additional app battery-saving options running by default.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Xiaomi Mi A3 for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Speaker
There's a single bottom-firing loudspeaker on the Mi A3 but it is quite loud and scored an Excellent mark on our test. The output turned out very pleasant - the sound is rich and deep and we didn't hear any high-pitched notes, so we'd give it an excellent mark as well.
Audio quality
The Xiaomi Mi A3 delivered the expected clear output with an active external amplifier although it could only do so at average volume levels.
Then things got worse as we plugged in our standard headphones. Volume plummeted to way below average, frequency response got shaky, while stereo crosstalk rose an average amount. We also recorded some intermodulation distortion adding up to a performance to forget.
Xiaomi Mi A1 was quite the booster for the whole Android One program and paved the way for a fruitful partnership between Xiaomi and Google. The Mi A2 was a significant but controversial upgrade that eventually cemented the Mi A1 as the ultimate deal. And now, the Mi A3 is trying to right all the wrongs and reach for the top once again.
The Android purists can now enjoy the vanilla Google experience on a Super AMOLED screen. There is new Snapdragon chipset promising blazing-fast gaming performance. Then a trending triple-camera should allow you to snap some great pictures day and night. And finally, the large 4,030 mAh battery inside should help you do all these things for many, many hours on.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
The camera is probably the most interesting new bit, now featuring a 48MP primary shooter and an 8MP ultrawide-angle snapper. The third eye is a depth sensor, which may seem useless, but we are always in for a surprise in them portraits.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
Xiaomi Mi A3 specs
- Body: aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass 5 front and back;
- Display: 6.01" Super AMOLED, 1,560x720px resolution, 19.5:9 aspect ratio, 286ppi;
- Triple rear camera: Wide - 48MP f/1.8, 1/2", 0.8µm pixel size, PDAF; Ultrawide - 8MP, f/2.2, 1.12µm pixel size; Depth sensor - 2MP, f/2.4; 2160p@30fps.
- Front camera: 32MP, 0.8µm pixel size, f/2.0; 1080p/30fps video recording.
- OS: Android 9 Pie; Android One.
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 665: octa-core CPU (4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver), Adreno 610 GPU.
- Memory: 4GB of RAM; 64/128GB storage; hybrid microSD slot (uses SIM2)
- Battery: 4,030mAh Li-Po (sealed); 18W fast charging.
- Connectivity: Dual-SIM; LTE-A, 4-Band carrier aggregation, Cat.15/13 (800Mbps/150Mbps); USB-C; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; Bluetooth 5.0
- Misc: Under-display fingerprint reader; single down-firing speaker; 3.5mm jack
Xiaomi is indeed righting those wrongs by bringing the audio jack back! And the microSD slot! And FM radio! And the larger battery is indeed a wish come true.
The elephant in the room, the 720p screen, definitely stands out and not in a good way. It's been a while since we worked on such a low-res screen, let alone a PenTile AMOLED. But let's stay positive and give it a fair chance, shall we?
Unboxing the Xiaomi Mi A3
The Mi A3 retail box contains what you'd expect from a mid-ranger's bundle - a USB-C cable, a 10W charger, and inside the paper compartment there is a dark gray silicone case.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
A lot of Chinese phones usually have a screen protector pre-applied in the factory but the Mi A3 is not among those. It does come with Gorilla Glass 5 protection on both sides and we can understand why Xiaomi decided against a having a protector.
Design
The Xiaomi Mi A3 is your typical glass-sandwich smartphone with an aluminum frame, well protected thanks to the two Gorilla Glass 5 pieces. And while it looks like any other device of such build, the Mi A3 is a major Mi 9 lookalike. Those are enough reasons to call it of premium looks and build, even though its price suggests otherwise.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi 9 next to the Mi A3 |
The notch houses the new 32MP selfies camera, while the tiny top bezel has a grille for the earpiece at the center and a couple of invisible sensors on the left.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
Finally, the chin is unusually big, especially for an OLED panel, but we can live with that on a cheap phone. At least everything is protected by a Gorilla Glass 5 and we always appreciate a high-end glass on a budget handset.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
The back also uses a Gorilla Glass 5, but this time around it's bent towards its edges. Having such subtle curves is a familiar design concept - one that makes the Mi A3 look and feel slimmer than it actually is, but this also takes a huge toll on the grip.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
The back of the Mi A3 is yet another reminder of the Mi 9. The Mi A3 is available in these coolly named hues - Kind of Gray, Not just Blue, and More than White. Remind you of some Pixels, maybe?
 |
| Xiaomi Mi 9 next to the Mi A3 |
The metal frame is also painted in Not just Blue and has a very glossy finish. It is also quite curved, so abandon all hopes for a good grip on the Mi A3. If you don't use a case, then using the A3 with extreme caution is highly advised.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
The bottom has a single loudspeaker, the mouthpiece, and a USB-C port.
The Mi A3 measures 153.5 x 71.9 x 8.5 mm, which is 5mm shorter and 3mm narrower than the Mi A2, which also had a 6" display but one of a different aspect ratio and thicker bezels. The A3 weighs 174g, about 8g heavier than the Mi A2 and A1.
The Mi A3 is a great-looking smartphone with premium and solid build, but almost non-existent grip. That's the widespread mantra even among the flagships though, so we can't really blame Xiaomi for following the current trends and bringing what's considered premium.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
Display
Let's start with some good news - Xiaomi has switched to Samsung-made AMOLED panel for the Mi A3. The Mi A1 and Mi A2 both had IPS LCD screens, which were good, but not OLED good.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
But the Mi A1 and Mi A2 both had 1080p screens, while the Mi A3 downgrades the resolution to 720p. The actual resolution is 720 x 1,560 pixels (19.5:9 aspect) or 286ppi density. This could have been fine, but the PenTile OLED matrix isn't suited for low-res screen because it has less subpixels than a regular RGB display and pixelization and jagged texts are occasional. The Galaxy S III kickstarted the use of PenTile AMOLEDs and even this 2012 smartphone had higher pixel density at 306ppi.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
Indeed, the low-res AMOLED suffers because of the PenTile matrix, but it's quite easy to get used to not see the tiny spikes on the letters and the dotted backgrounds. We are not saying you have to do it at all costs, but you really can. And then you can reap the benefits of the lower 720p resolution such as flagship-grade gaming performance across all modern games. How about that?
We are not sure why Xiaomi opted for a 720p display, but by doing so it made the Mi A3 a gaming phone on the budget. And we can very well live with that.
The screen has a decent brightness for an OLED panel of 363 nits. Unfortunately, the Mi A3 runs vanilla Android instead of MIUI (like its Mi CC9e doppelganger) and this means it lacks High Brightness Mode. So, even in the brightest of days, the Mi A3 won't light up more than 363 nits, not even in Auto Brightness mode.
The minimum brightness we measured was 14.9 nits - which is uncomfortably bright. It's quite disappointing to see such result as almost all phones we have tested in recent years go as low as 1-4 nits.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
| 0 | 363 | ∞ | |
| 0.277 | 420 | 1516 | |
| 0.351 | 551 | 1570 | |
| 0 | 449 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 646 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 444 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 637 | ∞ | |
| 0.358 | 479 | 1338 | |
| 0 | 448 | ∞ | |
| 0.285 | 508 | 1782 | |
| 0.362 | 549 | 1517 | |
| 0.39 | 480 | 1231 | |
| 0.413 | 501 | 1213 | |
| 0.377 | 490 | 1300 | |
| 0.465 | 600 | 1290 | |
| 0 | 424 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 551 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 451 | ∞ | |
Xiaomi is promising 102.7% coverage for the NTSC color gamut and we can confirm this. The color accuracy, however, isn't that splendid with an average deltaE of 4.9. Most of the blue hues we measured turned out punchier than they should be, and thus all whites and grays have a minor bluish tint, but still, it's a good enough presentation.
Battery life
The Xiaomi Mi A3 is the first A-series specimen to be powered by a 4,030mAh Li-ion battery, about 35% larger than the cells inside the Mi A1 and A2.
The Mi A3 supports Quick Charge 3.0 and if you use a compatible 18W charger, it will fill about 45% of a depleted battery in 30 mins. A full charge would require about 100 mins.
The Mi A3 ships with a 10W charger though and it recharges from 0 to 28% in 30 mins, while a full charge takes about 150 mins.
The Mi A3 posted a top-notch endurance rating of 101 hours and great scores across the board. The screen-on times are outstanding - we measured 12 and a half hours runtime in our web browsing test and north of 21 hours in our video playback test.
The standby performance was about the average, not as great as on MIUI-booting phones as those have some additional app battery-saving options running by default.
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 |
Speaker
There's a single bottom-firing loudspeaker on the Mi A3 but it is quite loud and scored an Excellent mark on our test. The output turned out very pleasant - the sound is rich and deep and we didn't hear any high-pitched notes, so we'd give it an excellent mark as well.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
| 67.9 | 73.5 | 80.4 | Very Good | |
| 68.9 | 71.3 | 82.7 | Very Good | |
| 70.6 | 74.8 | 81.2 | Very Good | |
| 71.5 | 73.8 | 83.1 | Excellent | |
| 74.1 | 74.3 | 81.9 | Excellent | |
| 69.8 | 71.5 | 90.5 | Excellent | |
| 67.5 | 73.8 | 90.5 | Excellent | |
| 74.0 | 73.9 | 90.4 | Excellent | |
| 79.3 | 77.1 | 91.1 | Excellent | |
| 89.5 | 72.2 | 89.8 | Excellent | |
| 86.2 | 79.0 | 87.0 | Excellent |
Audio quality
The Xiaomi Mi A3 delivered the expected clear output with an active external amplifier although it could only do so at average volume levels.
Then things got worse as we plugged in our standard headphones. Volume plummeted to way below average, frequency response got shaky, while stereo crosstalk rose an average amount. We also recorded some intermodulation distortion adding up to a performance to forget.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.02, -0.01 | -93.7 | 90.7 | 0.0015 | 0.0098 | -93.0 | |
| +0.53, -0.22 | -90.6 | 88.8 | 0.0048 | 0.302 | -50.8 | |
| +0.02, -0.13 | -93.0 | 92.8 | 0.0051 | 0.118 | -57.4 | |
| +0.02, -0.01 | -93.9 | 93.1 | 0.0015 | 0.0066 | -91.9 | |
| +0.05, -0.04 | -92.6 | 93.5 | 0.0026 | 0.072 | -58.7 | |
| +0.03, -0.01 | -85.8 | 86.8 | 0.0012 | 0.014 | -76.2 | |
| +0.05, -0.01 | -81.1 | 82.7 | 0.0068 | 0.059 | -52.0 |
 |
| Xiaomi Mi A3 frequency response |
