Xiaomi Mi A1’s Successor on the Android One program

Last week, Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi Mi 6X in China. The device has a 5.99″ FHD+ LCD panel, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 system-on-chip, dual rear 20MP+12MP cameras, and a single 20MP front-facing camera. It comes in 3 different RAM and storage variants and runs MIUI 9.5 on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. Ever since this device was first rumored to exist, various tech blogs have lumped the unconfirmed “Xiaomi Mi A2” together with the device. There was never any direct evidence for the Mi A2’s existence, but since people assumed it to exist and since the Xiaomi Mi A1 was essentially a re-branded Xiaomi Mi 5X, people assumed the same would be true for the assumed successor to the Xiaomi Mi A1. While we still can’t confirm if there’s a “Xiaomi Mi A2” or if it will indeed be a re-branded Xiaomi Mi 6X, we can confirm that there will indeed be a Mi A1 successor and that it’ll possibly be based on the Mi 6X.

Welcome “jasmine_sprout” to the Xiaomi Android One family
The Xiaomi Mi A1 was codenamed “tissot_sprout” where “sprout” signifies that the device is part of the Android One program (“sprout” is notably the codename for the first generation Android One devices.) Now, a new device’s firmware has appeared, codenamed “jasmine_sprout.” While we were unable to obtain a full dump of the device’s firmware, we were able to view a few key files from a partial dump—namely, the device’s build.prop, system applications, and permission files. Based on the following reasons, we believe that the firmware files we obtained are indeed for an Android One device:

The codename suffix “sprout” is typically seen in Android One devices.
There are no MIUI system applications in the build.
The Android framework, SystemUI, and other system applications are stock Android-based. (Unlike MIUI apps, I was able to fully decompile them with APKTool to see what’s inside.)
The file “com.google.android.feature.ANDROID_ONE_EXPERIENCE.xml” can be found in /system/etc/permissions. This is a special permission that can be read by apps to guard whether or not the app should be accessible to the device. (Apps unique to the Google Pixel phones such as Google Camera are also guarded by similar flags in /system/etc/sysconfig.)
The device has A/B partitions to support seamless updates. We confirmed this by the presence of ro.build.ab_update being set to true. The only other Xiaomi device, even among its flagships, that supports seamless updates is the Xiaomi Mi A1—another Android One device.
Xiaomi Mi A1 Xiaomi Android One Xiaomi Mi A2


Given that this is definitely an Android One device from Xiaomi, exactly what will it be called? There’s unfortunately no name given in the firmware, but we have been able to piece together some clues. First of all, the device will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 system-on-chip. This is evident by a comment in the build.prop file as well as lines in mmi.xml, a file that contains hardware testing parameters for diagnostic purposes in the MMI app. Second, several camera-related parameters hint at a relation to the Xiaomi Mi 6X such as the shared EXIF model (at least, for now) and the shared front-facing camera sensor. “Wayne” is the codename for the Xiaomi Mi 6X which you can verify for yourself by looking at the public list of Certified Android devices while the IMX376 is the 20MP Sony sensor that the Mi 6X uses for its front-facing camera.



While it’s certainly not concrete evidence, these findings do lend some credence to the idea that the Xiaomi Mi A1’s successor will be based on the Mi 6X. Whatever “jasmine_sprout” ends up as, its hardware specifications are unlikely to surprise us since Xiaomi is unlikely to release an entirely new hardware model for its next Android One device. Unlike the Mi A1, however, though this device will launch with Android 8.1 Oreo and hence support Project Treble.