Xiaomi announced its mid-ranger Mi A2 around the same time last year, which means we can expect its successor anytime now. The Chinese company has also started teasing the device, claiming that the Mi A3 will be better than the last generation device, and looking at some recently leaked renders and specifications, it does look like the new phone will have numerous notable improvements.
It is widely believed that the Mi A3 will actually be a global version of the Mi CC9e, which has already been released in China. In fact, the cellular service provider Ting has used the same model number for the Mi CC9e and Mi A3. That being said, nothing can be said for sure at this point, so it’s best to take this report with a pinch of salt.
The alleged renders of the Mi A3 suggest that the phone will be available in three paint jobs- white, blue and gray. Unlike the Mi A2, which has a wide notch, it appears that the Mi A3 will have a small waterdrop notch to accommodate the 32 megapixels front camera.
The phone is tipped to come with a 6.0-inch AMOLED display with a full HD resolution of 2240×1080 and a pixel density of 409 PPI. It also seems like Mi A2’s physical fingerprint scanner will not be retained, which means the upcoming mid-range phone will most likely have an in-display fingerprint reader.
The leaked images also show that the Mi A3 will have a triple rear camera system and per the alleged specifications, the phone will feature one 48 megapixel sensor, an 8 megapixels unit, and a 2MP camera. The maximum aperture size will apparently be F / 1.79.
The phone will presumably be underpinned by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 Octa-core chipset, a relatively new entrant in the market, with 4x Kryo 260 Cortex A73-based cores clocked at 2.0GHz, and 4x Kryo 260 Cortex A53-based cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Compared to the 14nm Snapdragon 660 that fueled the Mi A2, this SoC is based on the 11nm manufacturing process, but the CPU side is largely the same, so performance spike isn’t expected to be substantial.
That being said, along with the supposed 4GB of RAM and either 64 or 128GB of internal memory, the phone can be expected to provide decent performance. The onboard memory will reportedly be expandable via a microSD card and the phone will also have two Nano SIM card slots.
The Mi A3 is expected to pack in a 4,000mAh capacity battery and just like its predecessors; it will be a part of the Android One program, which means it will most likely run the stock version of Android 9 Pie.
Xiaomi is expected to introduce the Mi A3 in three variants, a lite model, a standard version, and possibly a pro version, which some outlets believe will be the global edition of the Mi CC9, which is expected to come with the Snapdragon 730 chipset under the hood.
Since Xiaomi says that the Mi A3 will be a better deal than the Mi A2, it will most likely not cost more than $200. More details are expected in the coming days, as the Chinse company has announced that the phone will be here soon.