Xiaomi is working on two Android One phones with in-display fingerprint scanners

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Although Xiaomi’s Redmi Note smartphones offer users incredible value, their MIUI software isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. While MIUI has certainly improved over the years, many users still prefer the stock Android experience as shown by the popularity of AOSP-based custom ROMs on our forums. Fortunately, Xiaomi does sell a few mid-range smartphones with near stock builds of Android. The Xiaomi Mi A smartphones are part of the Android One program and so their software is a close-to-stock Android UI with the addition of a custom camera app. It’s been nearly 9 months since the launch of the Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite, so we’re expecting to see Xiaomi unveil new Android One smartphones in the next few months. Today, we have some information to share on what may be their next two Android One devices.

XDA Junior Member franztesca discovered that Xiaomi has started hardware testing three new devices, two of which are likely Android One devices. We confirmed these findings in our own analysis. The three smartphones are code-named “pyxis,” “bamboo_sprout,” and “cosmos_sprout.” “bamboo_sprout” and “cosmos_sprout” are likely Android One smartphones given the _sprout suffix in their code-names. If you look at the list of Google Play certified Android devices, you’ll find that every smartphone in the Android One program has “sprout” in their code-name. While not an Android One smartphone, “pyxis” is possibly the Chinese variant of either bamboo_sprout or cosmos_sprout. The Xiaomi Mi 5X is the Chinese variant of the Mi A1, while the Xiaomi Mi 6X is the Chinese variant of the Mi A2. Thus, I’m speculating that “pyxis” may be the successor to the Mi 6X.

All three smartphones are being tested with “fod,” or fingerprint on display. This is the term that vendors use for in-display fingerprint scanners, so we expect all three devices to have this technology. Although the use of a powerful chipset like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is not required for a device to support an under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, we highly doubt these three devices will have an ultrasonic sensor anyway since those sensors require expensive flexible OLED displays. Thus, these three smartphones will likely have optical under-display fingerprint sensors like most Android smartphones with the technology.

These three smartphones will likely have 32MP front-facing cameras like the Vivo V15 Pro, but with 4-in-1 pixel binning support. We believe this to be the case as Xiaomi is testing image output at 32MP resolution (6560 x 4928) for the front camera with remosic enabled. We don’t know if these devices will have any other front-facing cameras, nor do we have any information to share on their rear camera(s).

While we don’t know what chipsets these smartphones will have, we are certain anyway that none of these Xiaomi devices are flagship smartphones. In fact, we can exclude all three from having the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 as we’ve already determined the code-names of the remaining Xiaomi flagships with the chipset. Instead, we expect these three devices to be mid-range products, so they’ll likely have mid-range Snapdragon chipsets. We’re not sure if these Android One smartphones will be powered by Xiaomi’s new best friend, the Snapdragon 636/660, or something more powerful like the Snapdragon 675 or Snapdragon 710. There’s also the possibility that these smartphones will have different chipsets, like how the Mi A2 came with the Snapdragon 660 while the Mi A2 Lite came with the Snapdragon 625 (Xiaomi’s old best friend.) Given that the Mi A2 shipped with the Snapdragon 660, we expect its successor to at least have the Snapdragon 675, though.

We don’t know the marketing names, pricing, or availability of these three smartphones. Hardware testing of new devices starts weeks before the devices appear in the hands of testers and months before the marketing materials disseminate to online retailers. Thus, we likely won’t see detailed renders or specification sheets of these three smartphones for some time.

We previously spotted a Xiaomi device code-named “orchid_sprout” which we also believed to be an Android One smartphone. Sadly, Xiaomi has dropped the “sprout” suffix in the device’s code-name in all references we can find, so it’s possible that the company decided they won’t release an Android One variant of the upcoming “orchid” smartphone. It’s also possible that the company has abandoned development of “orchid,” but we don’t know its current development status so we can’t say for sure. If we learn more about “pyxis,” “bamboo_sprout,” “cosmos_sprout,” or “orchid,” we’ll let you all know.

Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.