Xiaomi Poco F1 Review

Xiaomi Poco F1 design

 

 

The Poco F1 sports a 6.18-inch full-HD+ display with an 18.7:9 aspect ratio. It has 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. Just like other recently launched smartphones, the Poco F1 has a notch at the top of the display, but it’s bigger than the ones on the OnePlus 6 (Review) and the LG G7+ ThinQ (Review), primarily because it houses an infrared camera, infrared emitter, 20-megapixel selfie camera, and the earpiece. Also, the borders around the display are slightly thicker than on those phones. The bottom chin is thick and houses a tiny white notification LED, which also lights up when a cable is plugged in.
The buttons on the Poco F1 are placed on the right. The power button is easy to reach but the volume controls are placed a little too high, needing a bit of a shuffle to reach them. At the back, this phone has a vertically positioned dual camera setup along with a dual-LED flash. Below the camera module is the fingerprint scanner. The positioning is perfect, and either of your index fingers will rest on it naturally when you hold the Poco F1.
Another thing we found hard to ignore about Xiaomi's Poco F1 was the fact that the display doesn't quite look to be sitting flush with the body of the phone. We've been spoilt by unibody phones at even more affordable price points, and it seems this is one of the areas where Xiaomi has decided to keep the costs in check.
The back is made out of polycarbonate for the regular variants of this smartphone. We had the Armoured Edition for review, which has a Kevlar back. Xiaomi says that it has used real Kevlar, and you can feel the weave when you run your fingers over it. We haven’t used the other variants with the polycarbonate back other than the brief time that we spent with them before launch, and it's safe to say they don't look as slick as the competition.
Xiaomi has retained the 3.5mm headphone jack, and it’s positioned on the top along with the secondary microphone. The Poco F1 does not have an IR emitter, commonly seen on Xiaomi smartphones. At the bottom, it has a USB Type-C port and two grilles on either side, of which only the right one houses a loudspeaker. The phone weighs 182g and you will notice the weight when you hold it. This is mainly down to the 4000mAh battery. Xiaomi ships a Qualcomm Quick Charge 3 certified charger in the box to top it up quickly.



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Xiaomi Poco F1 specifications, software, and features

The Poco F1 sports a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with four cores clocked at 2.8GHz and the other four clocked at 1.8GHz. Xiaomi has designed a cooling system called ‘LiquidCool’ for this phone, using a copper chamber with vapour in it to dissipate heat. There are three RAM and storage variants: 6GB RAM with 64GB storage, 6GB RAM with 128GB storage, and 8GB RAM with 256GB of storage, with the Armoured Edition we reviewed only available in the latter configuration. The Poco F1 has a hybrid dual-SIM tray that lets you expand storage if you wish to.
Xiaomi has opted for LPDDR4X for RAM and UFS2.1 for storage, similar to the Honor Play (Review). In terms of connectivity, the Poco F1 has Bluetooth 5 and dual-band WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac. The Poco F1 is a hybrid dual-SIM device. It has support for 4G and VoLTE on both SIMs, which lets both SIMs be on a 4G network. Xiaomi has said that the Poco F1 also supports 4G+ that will lets it latch onto the 800MHz and 2300MHz bands simultaneously.
The dual camera setup consists of a 12-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.9 aperture, 1.4-micron pixels, and dual-pixel autofocus. The secondary camera is a 5-megapixel depth sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and 1.12-micron pixels. At the front, this phone has a 20-megapixel selfie shooter.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 is unheard of at these prices, but the Poco F1 also offers excellent battery life, something people have been asking for. The Armoured Edition uses Kevlar which feels different from the materials we already have in the market, though you may find the build quality of the other variants a bit underwhelming. All these factors make it an easy phone to recommend, though we would still like Xiaomi to tweak the camera on the Poco F1 for better low-light performance. Availability could be an issue with the Poco F1, as Xiaomi is once again relying on flash sales, and there’s sure to be enormous demand. If you do manage to get your hands on one of these phones, go for it because this is the best value you’ll get for your money.