[Xiaomi Mi A2 / 6X Guides, News, & Discussion] ILA:
Bit of a rant and discussion.

I've bought this phone 4 days ago and was so happy with it's performance, look and general experience with it. Long have I waited for a phone to have a fairly powerful chipset like the Snapdragon 660 at an affordable price point to finally retire my Nexus 5 which has started failing on me and needed a replacement ASAP.

When I saw that I could pick this phone up for 240 euro for the 64GB version I thought that it was a decent upgrade over my beloved Nexus and that given that it is an Android One phone, it wouldn't be all that different from a Nexus. What I mean by this is update timely support for 2 years and security updates for another 1. Also, being that it's just as easy to unlock the bootloader as on the Nexus, I was expecting that the dev support would be nearly identical, specially at this price point.

Given that this is my first Xiaomi device, I was not aware of the time it took Xiaomi to release it's kernel source hindering the dev support at the device's prime. But all this wouldn't be as much of an issue since I mainly planned to stick with the stock ROM and root it to get a couple of more features that it doesn't have by default as well as use a couple of apps that make my life a bit easier and when the source lands, we would have it at the devices EOL so that the support could continue. For the whole two days, I was happy with this agreement until I found out about Xiaomi's newly anounced Poco F1. I had heard about this phone on the day that I've bought my A2, but dismissed it because of the rumored price of 400+ euro.

The announced phone has everything that this phone lacks for me which is a 3.5mm jack, memory card slot and a 1000 mAh bigger battery. On top of that, it has that sweet, sweet Snapdragon 845. To top all that off, it's promised that the kernel source code will land upon launch of the device on 29th August which along with the equally easily unlockable bootloader makes me think that the Poco F1 should've been the real successor to my Nexus. Digging a little bit I've found out that the Xiaomi phones are actually officially supported for quite some time by Xiaomi but that the base android version can be old. At the announcement of the F1 they promised to solve the base not being updated thanks to project Treble.

Now, when I was buying this phone, I was very budget conscious and the 240 euro at this point of the year was a bit of a stretch for me given the vacation part of the year, but I really needed a phone and thought that the 20 euro over the 220 price of the 32GB was worth it. Now, the F1 is announced at 300$ in India which would translate to 300 euro in my country, probably (waiting for the launch in Europe). That is another 60 over the A2, but you get so much better specs. Even tho the A2 is a lot more premium than the F1, given that I'm coming from the Nexus 5, you know where my heart is when it comes to "premium vs performance" thing. I'm not much of a camera guy, just need a decent one and both have great cameras but I am an audiophile and I quite enjoy the output out of the A2. The speakerphone lacks a bit of bass but it is very loud (specially compared to the Nexus 5) and the headphone output, even being a bit clunky with the USB Type C adapter thing, is really good. Looking at the keynote, I've seen that the F1 should have a good DAC for the headphones, but I've read that the front facing dual speakers are a bit tinny which is not an issue, just as long as the quality and clarity is acceptable given that for any high quality audio I would resort to headphones anyway. Only things that I'm not a fan on the F1 is the notch at the top and the curvature of the edges of the screen. The notch can be turned off without loss given that the display is larger than the A2 for the notch, but you're still left with those huge curves at the bottom edges.

Now having said all of this, I'm really tempted to sell my new A2 in favor of the F1. Are there any reasons or benefits to sticking with the A2 instead of switching over to the F1 that I'm missing?

I would greatly appreciate your opinion on this matter.