Poco F1 review: A ‘little’ phone with global aspirations

Price: Rs 20,999 onwards

Rating: *****

Should you buy an expensive, flagship phone and use it for several years? Or should you buy a cheaper phone and compromise on performance — but retain the advantage of being able to upgrade it in a year or two? It’s a big dilemma for many smartphone buyers but the fact of the matter is, we need to replace phones often because they wear out. Wouldn’t it be great to have your cake and eat it too?


Poco means little in Spanish — as a little division within Xiaomi, the Poco team has an important task: to make Xiaomi mainstream! The F1 is their first product, designed from the ground up to solve problems (read: gaps) in the smartphone space. After the first launch in India, they’re taking the Pocophone F1 to 62 more countries. Globally, the brand will be called Pocophone while in India, they’re sticking to Poco to keep it simple.

In case you’re wondering, Poco will benefit from Xioami’s strengths — it will be made in India (in one of their six factories) and sold online on Flipkart and Mi.com. Plus, it inherits the 1000+ service centers and the goodwill of a brand that has earned a top spot in the Indian market in just four years.

But we’re excited about this phone for one important reason: it’s the cheapest phone with the flagship Snapdragon 845 chipset and because it brings a whole new level of performance to the mid-range segment. The RAM it uses is DDR4X type and the 64/128/256GB storage is the UFS 2.1 type — both are the faster kinds used in premium phones. However, at a starting price of Rs 20,999 (for 6/64GB), any consumer who was looking at a midrange phone will obviously start aiming higher.

Apart from the insane value proposition with the flagship chipset, there are a few things that set the Poco F1 apart. First is the 4,000mAh battery. You don’t normally find such huge batteries in flagship phones. We got a full day of battery life (8am to 10pm) with between 7 to 8 hours of screen on time. Next is the liquid cooling technology. Performance is one thing but sustained performance is another. A high performance chipset like the Snapdragon 845 will start with a bang but it will start to ‘throttle’ or reduce performance if it starts overheating. A copper heatsink in the F1 helps dissipate heat faster from the processor which allows it to sustain peak performance for longer durations — such as long gaming sessions on PUBG or Arena of Valor. Third is IR assisted face unlock. In a typical face unlock scenario, you need a lot of light for it to work. In low light, some phones will light up the screen bright white in an effort to recognize your face. The F1 has a front facing IR emitter in the notch. It emits light that only the camera can see and the end result is that you can unlock your face even in complete darkness.

So how did they do it? The red, blue and black Poco F1 variants are all polycarbonate (plastic) phones, including the frame. This is a substantial cost saving not just in material but also in development costs such as designing the 4G antennas and other radios. The notch type screen is FHD+ resolution and high quality but the bezels are a bit on the thicker side for this price point. This sort of bucks the trend and allows Poco to make the F1 the cheapest SD845 phone in the world.


For the people who still want premium materials, the Armored Edition (available in 8/256GB only) has a Kevlar aramid fiber back panel — the same material used in bullet proof vests. Not only does it look great, it also resists fingerprints/ scratches, is durable and anti-slip on any surface (including your hand). Coming to the camera, the F1 is no slouch. The 12MP primary sensor uses an f1.9 aparture and large 1.4 micron pixels for better low light shots. It also does great portrait photos and offers a full manual mode. For video, it can shoot slow-motion, time lapse, and 4K 30fps. It doesn’t include any optical stabilization but it does have EIS for video. The MiUI interface deserves special mention too — it’s been tweaked for performance now. It has an app drawer, supports icon packs and offers loads of customization.

Xiaomi has proved before that it knows the pulse of the Indian consumer — with Poco, they’re only cementing that bond. This phone is going to be a sure-fire hit and that brings us to what is probably the only downside — it’s going to be really hard to buy thanks to weekly flash sales (at least at first). Good luck!