The Redmi 8A has two Nano-SIM slots and a dedicated microSD slot for storage expansion. There is support for 4G as well as VoLTE on both SIMs as well as Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, and four satellite navigation systems. The Redmi 8A also has wireless FM functionality, so you won't have to plug a headset in to listen to FM radio.
In terms of software, the Xiaomi Redmi 8A runs MIUI 10 on top of Android 9 Pie. Our unit was running the August security patch. The interface is similar to what we have seen on other Xiaomi phones. There is no app drawer, and all app icons are placed on the home screens. There is a fair amount of bloatware pre-installed, including Mi Community, Paytm, Mi Credit, Mi Store, Amazon, Facebook, WPS Office, Dailyhunt, Gaana, and Opera Mini. This phone also has games called Ludo Master, Block Puzzle Guardian, Pop Shooter Blast, and Dust Settle pre-installed. There's even an app store called GetApps which can be used as an alternative to the Google Play Store.
The Redmi 8A is plagued by the same spammy notifications as other Xiaomi devices. We saw ads while installing new applications and also found that stock apps including Mi Music and Mi Video constantly generated spammy notifications. On the other hand, MIUI has a few useful features such as Dual Apps which lets you run two instances of supported apps. Google's Digital Wellbeing feature lets you monitor how you spend time on your smartphone, and you can also set up parental controls using Google's Family Link.
Gesture navigation is an option, and you can use this instead of the traditional three-button navigation layout. App Lock is built in, and you can lock down apps with a passcode or face recognition. There is also a Game Speed Booster app which claims to carry out performance optimisations and give more bandwidth to the app running in the foreground. You can also disable auto-brightness and the notifications shade swipe gesture while gaming.
Redmi 8A performance and battery life
The Redmi 8A has decent enough hardware to deliver a usable experience. We rarely observed slowdowns while using the smartphone, but heavy apps took longer to load. We had the base 2GB RAM variant for our review, and it could not keep many apps running in the background, which meant they had to be restarted each time we tried using them. There is no fingerprint sensor but face recognition is quick enough to unlock the smartphone conveniently.
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