72 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 64ROUND-UP
But the Mi A2 Lite is more appealing to a UK audience
thanks to its easier (now official UK) availability and
more familiar operating system, running Android
One rather than MIUI. The pictures within this article
are in fact of the Redmi 6 Pro, which was announced
before the Android One version, but the design and
features are identical.
Xiaomi’s budget line can be rather confusing. As
well as this Redmi 6 Pro there’s the standard Redmi
6 and cheaper still Redmi 6A (the latter two are now
both officially available in the UK). The 6 Pro or Mi
A2 Lite has very little in common with either of those
phones, as we’ll outline below. It looks a lot more
like the mid-range 6X (which is confusingly the MIUI
variant of the Android One-powered Mi A2), but the
hardware is very different.Design
The Mi A2 Lite is almost unrecognizable from its
cheaper Redmi 6 and 6A brothers, instead looking
a lot more like the Mi A2 – here the most notable
difference is the lack of a screen notch on the Mi A2.
Even before you turn it on you’ll notice it has a
metal body, whereas the cheaper models are plastic.
It’s not a unibody design, and there’s a noticeable
ridge between the screen’s plastic bezel and the metal
frame. There are also plastic top and bottom end caps
at the rear, which should improve cellular signal, but
even despite this the overall feeling in the hand is
much more premium.
At the back the A2 Lite has the same centrally
mounted fingerprint scanner as the Redmi 6 and Mi