Xiaomi Mi A2 & Mi A2 Lite native screen recording support looks unlikely & here's why

The Xiaomi Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite released back in 2018 and both models came with Android 8.1 Oreo pre-installed. Since then, both the Mi A2 and the Mi A2 Lite have picked up the update to Android 10.

Of course, the Android 10 update didn’t arrive as smoothly as it should have. Nonetheless, Android 10 brought along a bunch of new features and improvements for both devices, but not as many as some would have liked.

And since the duo is part of the Android One program, there aren’t many Xiaomi-exclusive features that are brought over to the two phones. Unlike other phones sold from Xiaomi that rock the MIUI skin, the Mi A series comes with a stock Android UI.

While it definitely has its own benefits, stock Android or even Google’s slightly tweaked Pixel UI lacks some useful features. Out of those, native screen recording support is one feature that has always been highly requested.

Previously, we reported that the call recording feature was rolling out to Mi A series devices. This was made possible thanks to Google’s updates to the Dialer application.

Unfortunately, Google has no official app for recording the screen. Further, in response to a user’s query regarding the screen recording feature, a moderator on the Mi Community forums said that the Screen Recorder is an MIUI application and will not be available for the Mi A2 Lite.

Translated text:

No. Screen recording is an application from MIUI, as you understand it is.

Needless to say, this is the same for the Mi A2 and all other devices from the Mi A series. But this wouldn’t have been the case if Google decided to add a native screen recorder feature within Android 10 itself.

As a matter of fact, the feature was present in the beta builds of Android 10. However, for some odd reason, Google opted to omit it with the final release. This was also brought up by a ‘Product Expert’ on Google’s support site. Here’s the entire statement:

The feature was present in Android 10 betas but removed in the final version, maybe because Google deemed it lacking certain features or because it was buggy.

You can still enable screen recording by running an ADB command, but you should only do this if you’re familiar with ADB.

Screen recording has been reintroduced in Android 11 developer preview, so there’s hope that the final version will include this feature, but we will just have to wait and see.

The product expert also goes on to mention that the screen recording feature has been reintroduced in the Android 11 developer preview. Thus, it’s possible that all Android 11 eligible phones might have native screen recording capabilities.

Unfortunately, the duo will not be getting the Android 11 update. Both devices have already received their promised 2 major OS updates. So it now appears that the Mi A2 and the Mi A2 Lite will never get support for native screen recording.

But Xiaomi Mi A3 users, on the other hand, might be a bit lucky as we reported that the phone could get support for native screen recording with the Android 11 update. Thankfully, there are a handful of great third-party screen recorders that you can try out from the Play Store.

In the meantime, you can take a look at the list of Android 11 eligible phones from Xiaomi. Further, you can always check out our Xiaomi Android 11 tracker to be the first to know when it arrives on yours or other Xiaomi phones.

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