Xiaomi unveiled two Android One devices, which it said offer notable upgrades from the previous generation and are offered at an “honest price”.

Wang Xiang, Xiaomi’s president of Xiaomi’s international business, said Mi A1, which was first unveiled last year, was a top-10 selling smartphone earlier in 2018, and had been “extremely well received”.

The devices run “pure” Android 8.1 with support for Google’s Project Treble, delivering faster system updates to users.

Mi A2 offers upgrades across-the-board. It has Sony-supplied 12MP+20MP rear cameras (compared with 12MP+12MP), 20MP front camera (up from 5MP) with a “selfie light”, 5.9-inch screen (up from 5.5-inch) and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chip, which offers a 79 per cent increase over the Snapdragon 625 used in Mi A1.

As usual, Xiaomi was not shy of comparing with rivals, in this case Samsung’s Galaxy A8. It said the Qualcomm chip offers 21 per cent better performance than the Exynos 7885 used in the Samsung device, and the pricing of €249 for Mi A2 with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage undercuts the €389 charged by Samsung for the same configuration.

Mi A2 is also available with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for €279, or 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage at €349.

Also announced at the event was the entry-level Mi A2 Lite, which the vendor says features a dual camera and two day (4,000mAh) battery.

Mi A2 Lite has a 5.84-inch full HD screen with 19:9 screen ratio, 12MP+5MP rear camera, and rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. It also sees the Snapdragon 625 chip taken into an entry level device, with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

Priced at €179, Xiaomi used Samsung’s Galaxy A6 for comparison. The South Korean vendor’s device costs €299, while offering a smaller screen (5.6-inch) and single 16MP rear camera.

A version of Mi A2 Lite with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage will cost €229.

With Xiaomi on a European push at the moment, the devices were unveiled at an event in Madrid, Spain. But it was noted that this was an international launch, with the smartphones set to be launched in 40 markets worldwide.

Device availability begins imminently.