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Xiaomi hasn’t launched a phone for at least a week, so it is about time some new rumours for their next phone start.
The Xiaomi Mi A2 and the Mi A2 Lite were two of the best budget phones last year thanks to the Android One experience they offered. Xiaomi has great hardware for amazing prices, but so so software, so stripping that back down to a pure version of Android is a big win.
The Xiaomi Mi A3 is set to launch soon, so inevitably rumours and leaks are picking up. Historically, the Mi A series is just a rebadged phone with a different OS. The Mi A2 was a Mi 6X, and the Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite was a Redmi 6 Pro.
If the Mi A3 does launch soon then the logical choice of hardware is from the Xiaomi Mi CC9 and Mi CC9e for the Lite variant. There are a couple of issues with this though, the CC9e only has a 720p display and it is unlikely that Xiaomi would downgrade the Lite model between generations.
Therefore, current rumours are a little conflicting, one likely scenario is that the phone will be the most of the hardware as the Xiaomi Mi CC9e. This would include a 6-inch AMOLED FHD+ display (matching the 6-inch display of the Mi CC9e, but the FHD+ panel of the CC9), a 48MP camera with two 8MP companions (matching both the CC9 and CC9e), 32MP selfie camera (matching both the CC9 and CC9e), 4GB of RAM (matching the base CC9e model), 64/128GB of internal storage, microSD card slot (matching neither), USB Type-C port, 4,000 mAh battery, a headphone jack, and, of course, Android One on top of Android 9 Pie.
I suspect this rumour is due to the fact that the Mi CC9e uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 which is this year’s version of the SoC used in the Mi A2.
Another popular belief is that the is set to get the Snapdragon 730. Compared to the S710 inside the CC9, this chip uses newer big cores (Cortex-A76 based Kryo 470, up from A75-based Kryo 360). Also, the new Adreno 618 promises a 25% boost over the old one. This would make the specification more like the Xiaomi Mi 9T or Redmi K20 as it is also called.
If this rumour is true then it is expected that the Mi A3 Lite will get the Snapdragon 675 which is a notch up from the SD665 found on the CC9e and a big upgrade from the SD625 of the old Mi A2 Lite.
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