Already using miui 12.5.8 since more than one month on my redmi note 10 pro

The awesome Mi A1 experience guy is me, also happening to be the author of the article. I jumped from the A1 to the 10T Pro, so no idea about the A2. I think I wasn't the one who wrote about the bricking problems or maybe I forgot. Every manufacturer has his own failed products, apparently.
Android One is still present on some Nokia phones, which are usually at least decent.

Oh god, please, everything but no more Android One from Xiaomi!

I am glad for the guy below, that had a great experience with Mi A1. But I have bought a Mi A2 for my mom and it was a terrible experience for her and for me as well. Every month she would come to me that her phone is bricked because of a damn update that had to install automatically and failed many times - causing a bootloop. Notebookcheck wrote many times about this. The worst phone of 2018-2019.

Mi A3 wasn't much better as far as I remember. That's why Xiaomi killed Android One series and Google also decided to pull the plug out. Other than that, I still love my Mi 9.

I sometimes feel annoyed when I bump into some software-related freeze (camera app freeze/crash from time to time, for example), but at least you can unlock the bootloader and grab some unofficial ROM. The problem is that I use it as my daily driver and a custom ROM would not allow me to run banking apps and such...
After this update, most of the stuff flows nicely. Very nicely, in fact. Also, my personal approach is to drop the multiple screens and use groups so I can access all the apps from the home screen. It works like a charm and looks great.
Android One made me love the Mi A1. After the initial "What is this crap?" shock, I somehow managed to live with MIUI by avoiding the weak parts. Check the XDA page that I linked to in the article. I would try LineageOS for stability and the ability to customize it myself while being as close to vanilla as possible (LineageOS 17.1, based on Android 10, works like a charm on my old Mi A1, which is now tortured by my 10 yo daughter) and Descendant XI for all the goodies included in it (see my hands-on with this ROM for the Mi A1 here - https://www.notebookcheck.net/Android-11-on-the-Xiaomi-Mi-A1-via-Descendant-XI-An-interesting-ROM-with-a-few-unique-features.520132.0.html).
Thank you for your reply and please do come back here after you manage to put a good rom on the thing! It's a pity that they managed to do such great work hardware-wise and they don't offer Android One as an option via the official channels - I am sure many of us wouldn't mind paying a small fee of 10, maybe 20 bucks to have access to that option.

This is the worst phone I've ever had. 100% because of the software. Everything is so junky and doesn't feel smooth and doesn't flow nicely. The notification bar is the worst thing just because of the single thing - it doesn't swipe down or swipe up - it fades in and fades out. The only way to "swipe" it off is to swipe it from the bottom of the screen, exactly where the large X button for clearing all notifications is!
The transitions feel unnatural - often one screen doesn't transition nicely from the other, but the old one disappears abruptly (sometimes even with a blink) and then the new one fades in smoothly.
Is there any good custom ROM for this POS?? Xiaomi will never fix what needs to be fixed in its software, which is their UI. They are only improving some core elements, which could be perfect, but if you interact with a bad UI nothing can help.