Xiaomi Mi A1 pre-order is starting soon in Malaysia

Looking for an affordable smartphone with stock Android experience? The Mi A1 is probably the best all rounder as it packs great specs and it comes with a dual-camera system. It was launched in India last week for 14,999INR (about RM985) and it’s coming very soon to Malaysia.

Retailer DirectD has announced that pre-orders for the Xiaomi Mi A1 will begin very soon. No dates were provided but Xiaomi did mention that the Mi A1 will be available in Malaysia by end of this month. Xiaomi has yet to reveal its pricing but we reckon it might be somewhere between RM999 to RM1,099.

The Mi A1 can be considered as the international variant of the Mi 5X as it shares the same hardware but it runs on stock Android instead of its custom MIUI ROM. Since it is under Android One, Google guarantees 2 years of software updates for the device. It currently runs on Android 7.1.2 Nougat and it will be getting Android 8.0 Oreo by end of this year. On top of that, the A1 will also be one of the first in line to get Android P.

Over at the front, it gets a 5.5″ Full HD display that’s encased in a full metal unibody design. It runs on a frugal Snapdragon 625 processor that’s mated to 4GB of RAM. Internally it gets 64GB of storage which you can expand further via microSD.

For taking pictures, the Mi A1 comes with a 12MP dual-camera system which one camera takes normal wide angle shots while the other offers 2X optical zoom. The front gets a 5MP f/2.0 camera that also comes with its selfie beautification features. It is juiced up by a 3,080mAh battery which charges via USB Type-C.

You can find out what we think of the Mi A1 in our first impressions post.