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It's hard to know what Android One stands for anymore. Originally the program saw Google lay out a "recommended spec" for local manufacturers, aiming for high-quality, low-cost devices with stock Android and fast updates directly from Google. The program wasn't popular with OEMs, which led to it being watered down significantly. Google relinquished control over the hardware and passed software update responsibility over to the OEMs. As far as we can tell, it means "stock Android" and not much else.

The Mi A1 is easily the highest-end Android One phone ever, with a 5.5-inch, 1080p LCD, a Snapdragon 625 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 3080mAh battery. There are lots of extras, too: a dual-sensor camera setup, a fingerprint sensor, a USB-Type C port, a headphone jack, a microSD card, and an IR blaster. While the Android One program originally started with $100 devices, Xiaomi's Mi A1 is up to 14,999 INR, or $234.

The dual camera setup has one 12MP main sensor and another 12MP sensor with a telephoto lens, giving you a 2x optical zoom and a depth-of-field effect. Android One is supposed to be totally stock Android, but since Google's camera app doesn't support a dual-camera setup, the Mi A1 ships with Xiaomi's camera app.

The Mi A1 follows Xiaomi's typical "do whatever Apple is doing" design, so it naturally looks a lot like an iPhone 7 Plus. Xiaomi does at least pick up some of Apple better habits, with an all-metal body and rounded sides.

While the software is (mostly) a Google-designed affair, the hardware isn't following Google's usual recommendations. This is the first Android One device that doesn't have on-screen navigation buttons. Xiaomi has outfitted the device with a set of old-school capacitive navigation buttons, and to make things ever weirder, the button order is backward from that seen on most phones.

Google's blog post promises that "Android One devices will receive timely upgrades to the latest Android OS," but we're not so sure. The device is launching with an old version of Android, Android 7.1, and Google's definition of "timely upgrades" is "an upgrade to Android Oreo before the end of the year." A three-month window isn't really "timely"; that's closer to the update speed of some skinned, third-party devices.

There's no word on the full list of "40 markets," but called out in the press release were "Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia, Poland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Mexico."

The Mi A1 will be out on September 12th in India.