Pocophone F1 Review: Killers Assassinated
by mitch002
They hype that the Pocophone F1 has created has took the world by storm, as one of the highly anticipated phones for 2018 which is almost a flagship performing phone at 300 USD only! Imagine how someone cannot get hyped with this unit with the price point that it has set, we are here to unbox and take all the necessary data that we need from the Pocophone F1 and share it to you, whether you should sell your current flagship phone and make the switch.
Xiaomi has been doing sub brands for this year, the first being the Black Shark gaming phone which also sported the Snapdragon 845 flagship SoC, and now the Poco F1 which is also another flagship level SoC with a jawdropping price. Xiaomi is taking on the likes of Oneplus 6 which offers their Flagship Killer at more than 500 USD, while this killer of the flagship killer is only under 300 USD, I'm not sure how the competitors will respond but me myself is also asking myself, like how did they do that?
Tech Specs of POCOPHONE F1:
Unboxing
Black and Yellow Box
Global Version?? Was there a China Version? I think not.
6/64 Variant in the house
Woohoo! Poco-Poco! The world is hyped over this phone
Well, not really a feel good on the hand unit since Im a Xiaomi flagship user
QC 3 Charger, Sim Ejector Pin, USB C Cable, Poco F1, Jelly Case and Manual
Video Unboxing
Design
Here is the most important part of the phone, there are many who are hyped over the Snapdragon 845 at a jaw dropping price, of course something has to give right? As per my careful observation, well the screen is the first to give as there are several drop test made by some known youtubers showing that the phone screen cracked immediately after it has dropped from 3ft above the feet, normally when its a Gorilla Glass 5, it could have survived, probably its not even a Gorilla Glass to begin with. Then the olephobic test, I poured some water on the screen and its not really slipped down the phone, there are some droplets of water staying on the screen as I titled it, therefore the olephobic is not as good as those from the flagship series.
The back case it probably the biggest drawback at the moment, but hey I did used a Redmi 2 way back when I was first starting with Xiaomi and its pretty much a plastic back just like this one, but this is not the very first plastic back by Xiaomi as the Mi 4i was the first Mi Series to ever wear a plastic back cover. Then the Redmi Series below Redmi 3 are pretty much plastic as well. Only the return of plastic are Redmi Note 5A and Redmi 5A series since they are also pretty cheap.
Redmi Note 2
Can you remember this unit that has debuted way back before and failed to follow up the hype that the Mi 3 has created? The PocoPhone F1 has that striking resemblance to the Mi 4 in terms of design, with a little mixture of the Mi 4i back case into this one, therefore the PocoPhone F1 was made. I can say this design is much the own of Xiaomi, unlike those protuded dual camera at the side of the phone which is a direct copy of Iphone X, this one Im happy to say its their own design, probably a reminisce of the old Mi 4.
The legendary Mi 4
Mi 4i
Look, I still have these bamboo cases from before
So if you are looking for performance over aesthetics, then this one is really for you. But if you are looking for flagship specs at flagship looks, then go for Mi MIX 2S or Mi 8. For Xiaomi to cap this at sub 300 USD is still a big question mark inside my head.
Screen looks nice, but cant match the OLED from Mi8
The screen is ample enough, not getting too much glare from lights
The notch is a little big wide tho.
Poco Theme of its own
Plastic back
Etched Pocophone logo
USB C, Loud speaker and mic in
Volume Rocker and Power button
Dual Camera and Ceramic finger print sensor. as well as the dual LED Flash
Red rign, just like my Mi8 Explorer Edition
3.5mm audio jack and nose cancellation mic
Sim card tray, can be 2 nano sim, or nano sim + micro SD Card
Rounded Edge
Snapdragon 845
One of the devices that is not of a flagship level that sports the latest chipset from Qualcomm is Pocophone F1, the Snapdragon 845 SoC has 8 cores and can run up to 2.8Ghz of computing speed. Now of course powered together with the powerful Adreno 630, and of course a generous serving of 6GB DDR4X RAM, it will give you the best experience in gaming up to date. Not mentioning that it can run even the most graphics hungry games like PUBG and NBA 2K18. This latest flagship by Qualcomm first appeared in MI MIX 2S for Xiaomi, then followed by Black Shark then Mi 8. We have it now here inside the heart of the Pocophone F1, and whats best is that its not even half the price of the Mi 8. We ran several stress test on this unit and we did not see any lags nor any slowdown on the opening of any apps on the Pocophone F1, multitasking was easy as breeze. This SoC is supports the 64-bit architecture which means it can compute at a very fast phase. So good graphics, good multitasking plus fast processing makes Snapdragon 845 probably one of the most premium SoC, and whats best in the Pocophone F1 is that you don't need to shell out that much cash just to get a taste of this speed that I am talking about.
Antutu gave it a score of 263974 points for the 6/64GB variant, which is pretty not bad to achieve a score at that price point, actually its a deal breaker.
Display and Audio
We didn't expect too much from the Pocophone F1 in terms of display and the audio part since we believe that there is something that needs to be sacrificed in order to achieve this price point. The IPS LCD display on this phone is an average of course putting it side by side with Mi MIX 2S and the Mi 8, but placed beside the Redmi 5 its quite at par.
As for the sounds, its a stereo for sure, wherein the loudspeaker sound comes from the right holes from the USB C as well as from the earpiece. Its not as loud as I expected it to be since the Mi 8 Explorer Edition that I'm holding has quite a big sound compared to the other flagship released by Xiaomi.
Supported Formats:
Connectivity
The Pocophone F1 supports 9 different LTE bands and good news, due to persistent public demand, B20 is now present in this phone. It's pretty easy to switch to LTE network inside the settings, and it also supports Dual 4G mode as well. You can freely choose which sim you want to use your LTE data, since this is a Dual LTE, Dual standby smartphone. This unit also has the 4G+ equipped, and also supports multiple carrier aggregation technology (should your network provider have this feature), you can take advantage of it. Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac is also smooth and it also supports Wi-Fi Direct. Wireless screen mirroring is also available via the Miracast protocol, tethering data is also working perfectly. Bluetooth 5.0,GPS, and GLONASS are all present.
Network Bands
GSM B2/3/5/8
WCDMA B1/2/5/8
FDD-LTE B1/3/5/7/8/20
TDD-LTE B38/40/41(120MHz)
Camera
The rear camera are coupled by a 12 Megapixels + 5 Megapixel sensor, one being the Sony IMX 363 Sensor and the other being the Samsung S5k. The front snapper is a Samsung Sensor S5k with 20 Megapixel together with a Aux Camera Omnivision for Face Unlocking and it took pretty average selfies and it also sported the bokeh portrait mode. The selfies are sometimes blurred under low light condition. The manual mode has an exposure time of 32S and ISO of 3200. Face Unlocking is also present as well and is very easy to use and it has a response time of probably 0.2 seconds, we tried it in total darkness and the infrared was still able to detect my face, tho there are slight delay, probably 0.4 seconds to unlock but still it gets the job done.
Actual Photos
2.3X Zoom
2.7X Zoom
Gundam Fan Spotted!
Selfie Camera
Bokeh Mode Group Selfie
Under Low Light
Video Sample UHD 4K
Video Review
Battery and Temperature
The Pocophone F1 supports the Qualcomm Quick charge 3.0 but inside the box it only includes a QC 2.0 charger, and we tested it took in 3.9 Voltes and 2700 Amperes based on our testing using the supplied cable and the QC 3.0 Charger from my Mi 8 EE, there was a moment it kicks to 12V 0.6A as well. We charged the phone from 18% to 100% in 1 hour and 24 minutes as I was able to closely monitored it. We recorded a 12 hour 27 minutes endurance test under the PC Mark battery stress test. If these statistics are true on a normal daily use, then it's really a good sign for the said smartphone, and based on my daily usage for several days, the battery seems to last me a whole day on normal usage.
Other Benchmarks
Pocophone F1 Verdict: Goodbye Flagship Killers!
As my review comes to an end, its always nice to give readers a good conclusion on what we have found out during our full review of this unit. Based on our honest comment on this phone, we pretty much love it especially for the speed as it was dubbed as the #masterofspeed, If you are not really after the aesthetics of the phone, everything else is pretty good like the liquid cooling, the camera and the display are all on the up side as per price point. Now all I can say is that we are going to watch this phone give the flagship killers a run for their money.
The Pocophone F1 reminded me a lot about the first wave of Mi 3 which took the world by storm as the unit that catapulted Xiaomi to fame with its low cost high specs phone. The same tactic is deployed to the Poco F1 now and it is working like a charm for the company. It just feels so nostalgic to remember the Mi 3 haydays.
PocoPhone F1
by mitch002
They hype that the Pocophone F1 has created has took the world by storm, as one of the highly anticipated phones for 2018 which is almost a flagship performing phone at 300 USD only! Imagine how someone cannot get hyped with this unit with the price point that it has set, we are here to unbox and take all the necessary data that we need from the Pocophone F1 and share it to you, whether you should sell your current flagship phone and make the switch.
Xiaomi has been doing sub brands for this year, the first being the Black Shark gaming phone which also sported the Snapdragon 845 flagship SoC, and now the Poco F1 which is also another flagship level SoC with a jawdropping price. Xiaomi is taking on the likes of Oneplus 6 which offers their Flagship Killer at more than 500 USD, while this killer of the flagship killer is only under 300 USD, I'm not sure how the competitors will respond but me myself is also asking myself, like how did they do that?
Tech Specs of POCOPHONE F1:
- · Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 Octa-core processor (4x2.8GHz Kryo 385 Gold and 4x1.8GHz Kryo 385 Silver)
- · Adreno 630 GPU 710Mhz
- · 6GB of RAM LPDDR4X
- · 6.18-inch IPS-LCD capacitive touchscreen display, (~83.8% screen-to-body ratio)
- · 1080 x 2246 pixels FHD+ (~403 ppi pixel density), 15,000:1 contrast ratio, 18.7:9 Ratio
- · 84% NTSC color gamut, high color saturation, 500nit
- · Steel Blue, Graphite Black, Rosso Red, Kevlar Armored Edition
- · 64GB / 128GB of storage UFS 2.1, USB-C
- · 12 MP, wide angle lens, EIS, f/1.9, 1.4µm, Dual-LED flash, AI
- 12 MP, telephoto lens, portrait lens, f/2.0, 1.12µm
- · 20 MP front camera, f/2.0, 0.9µm, 3D Beauty, Portrait Mode, Front HDR
- · Finger print scanner, IR Face Detection
- · Dual SIM (nano sim size)
- · 3G, LTE, 4G+ Carrier Aggregation, VoLTE Calls
- · Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, A-GPS
- · 4000mAh battery, Quick Charge 4.0 Supported
- · 2x2 MIMO Technology to support MU-MIMO
- · Sensors: Ultrasonic distance sensor, Ambient Light sensor, Gyro, Vibration Motor, Accelerometer, Barometer, Electronic
- Compass, Hall Sensor
- · Android Oreo 8.1, MIUI 9.6
- · 155.7 mm x 75.5 mm x 8.9 mm
- · 187 Grams
Unboxing
Black and Yellow Box
Global Version?? Was there a China Version? I think not.
6/64 Variant in the house
Woohoo! Poco-Poco! The world is hyped over this phone
Well, not really a feel good on the hand unit since Im a Xiaomi flagship user
QC 3 Charger, Sim Ejector Pin, USB C Cable, Poco F1, Jelly Case and Manual
Video Unboxing
Design
Here is the most important part of the phone, there are many who are hyped over the Snapdragon 845 at a jaw dropping price, of course something has to give right? As per my careful observation, well the screen is the first to give as there are several drop test made by some known youtubers showing that the phone screen cracked immediately after it has dropped from 3ft above the feet, normally when its a Gorilla Glass 5, it could have survived, probably its not even a Gorilla Glass to begin with. Then the olephobic test, I poured some water on the screen and its not really slipped down the phone, there are some droplets of water staying on the screen as I titled it, therefore the olephobic is not as good as those from the flagship series.
The back case it probably the biggest drawback at the moment, but hey I did used a Redmi 2 way back when I was first starting with Xiaomi and its pretty much a plastic back just like this one, but this is not the very first plastic back by Xiaomi as the Mi 4i was the first Mi Series to ever wear a plastic back cover. Then the Redmi Series below Redmi 3 are pretty much plastic as well. Only the return of plastic are Redmi Note 5A and Redmi 5A series since they are also pretty cheap.
Redmi Note 2
Can you remember this unit that has debuted way back before and failed to follow up the hype that the Mi 3 has created? The PocoPhone F1 has that striking resemblance to the Mi 4 in terms of design, with a little mixture of the Mi 4i back case into this one, therefore the PocoPhone F1 was made. I can say this design is much the own of Xiaomi, unlike those protuded dual camera at the side of the phone which is a direct copy of Iphone X, this one Im happy to say its their own design, probably a reminisce of the old Mi 4.
The legendary Mi 4
Mi 4i
Look, I still have these bamboo cases from before
So if you are looking for performance over aesthetics, then this one is really for you. But if you are looking for flagship specs at flagship looks, then go for Mi MIX 2S or Mi 8. For Xiaomi to cap this at sub 300 USD is still a big question mark inside my head.
Screen looks nice, but cant match the OLED from Mi8
The screen is ample enough, not getting too much glare from lights
The notch is a little big wide tho.
Poco Theme of its own
Plastic back
Etched Pocophone logo
USB C, Loud speaker and mic in
Volume Rocker and Power button
Dual Camera and Ceramic finger print sensor. as well as the dual LED Flash
Red rign, just like my Mi8 Explorer Edition
3.5mm audio jack and nose cancellation mic
Sim card tray, can be 2 nano sim, or nano sim + micro SD Card
Rounded Edge
Snapdragon 845
One of the devices that is not of a flagship level that sports the latest chipset from Qualcomm is Pocophone F1, the Snapdragon 845 SoC has 8 cores and can run up to 2.8Ghz of computing speed. Now of course powered together with the powerful Adreno 630, and of course a generous serving of 6GB DDR4X RAM, it will give you the best experience in gaming up to date. Not mentioning that it can run even the most graphics hungry games like PUBG and NBA 2K18. This latest flagship by Qualcomm first appeared in MI MIX 2S for Xiaomi, then followed by Black Shark then Mi 8. We have it now here inside the heart of the Pocophone F1, and whats best is that its not even half the price of the Mi 8. We ran several stress test on this unit and we did not see any lags nor any slowdown on the opening of any apps on the Pocophone F1, multitasking was easy as breeze. This SoC is supports the 64-bit architecture which means it can compute at a very fast phase. So good graphics, good multitasking plus fast processing makes Snapdragon 845 probably one of the most premium SoC, and whats best in the Pocophone F1 is that you don't need to shell out that much cash just to get a taste of this speed that I am talking about.
Antutu gave it a score of 263974 points for the 6/64GB variant, which is pretty not bad to achieve a score at that price point, actually its a deal breaker.
Display and Audio
We didn't expect too much from the Pocophone F1 in terms of display and the audio part since we believe that there is something that needs to be sacrificed in order to achieve this price point. The IPS LCD display on this phone is an average of course putting it side by side with Mi MIX 2S and the Mi 8, but placed beside the Redmi 5 its quite at par.
As for the sounds, its a stereo for sure, wherein the loudspeaker sound comes from the right holes from the USB C as well as from the earpiece. Its not as loud as I expected it to be since the Mi 8 Explorer Edition that I'm holding has quite a big sound compared to the other flagship released by Xiaomi.
Supported Formats:
- MP4 M4V MKV XVID
- WAV AAC MP3 FLAC
- Supports H.265 / HEVC (Main profile), H.264 (Baseline / Main / High profile), MPEG4 (Simple profile / ASP) and other video formats.
- Supports audio formats such as PCM, AAC / AAC + / eAAC +, MP3, AMR - NB and WB, FLAC, WAV.
Connectivity
The Pocophone F1 supports 9 different LTE bands and good news, due to persistent public demand, B20 is now present in this phone. It's pretty easy to switch to LTE network inside the settings, and it also supports Dual 4G mode as well. You can freely choose which sim you want to use your LTE data, since this is a Dual LTE, Dual standby smartphone. This unit also has the 4G+ equipped, and also supports multiple carrier aggregation technology (should your network provider have this feature), you can take advantage of it. Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac is also smooth and it also supports Wi-Fi Direct. Wireless screen mirroring is also available via the Miracast protocol, tethering data is also working perfectly. Bluetooth 5.0,GPS, and GLONASS are all present.
Network Bands
GSM B2/3/5/8
WCDMA B1/2/5/8
FDD-LTE B1/3/5/7/8/20
TDD-LTE B38/40/41(120MHz)
Camera
The rear camera are coupled by a 12 Megapixels + 5 Megapixel sensor, one being the Sony IMX 363 Sensor and the other being the Samsung S5k. The front snapper is a Samsung Sensor S5k with 20 Megapixel together with a Aux Camera Omnivision for Face Unlocking and it took pretty average selfies and it also sported the bokeh portrait mode. The selfies are sometimes blurred under low light condition. The manual mode has an exposure time of 32S and ISO of 3200. Face Unlocking is also present as well and is very easy to use and it has a response time of probably 0.2 seconds, we tried it in total darkness and the infrared was still able to detect my face, tho there are slight delay, probably 0.4 seconds to unlock but still it gets the job done.
Actual Photos
2.3X Zoom
2.7X Zoom
Gundam Fan Spotted!
Selfie Camera
Bokeh Mode Group Selfie
Under Low Light
Video Sample UHD 4K
Video Review
Battery and Temperature
The Pocophone F1 supports the Qualcomm Quick charge 3.0 but inside the box it only includes a QC 2.0 charger, and we tested it took in 3.9 Voltes and 2700 Amperes based on our testing using the supplied cable and the QC 3.0 Charger from my Mi 8 EE, there was a moment it kicks to 12V 0.6A as well. We charged the phone from 18% to 100% in 1 hour and 24 minutes as I was able to closely monitored it. We recorded a 12 hour 27 minutes endurance test under the PC Mark battery stress test. If these statistics are true on a normal daily use, then it's really a good sign for the said smartphone, and based on my daily usage for several days, the battery seems to last me a whole day on normal usage.
Other Benchmarks
Pocophone F1 Verdict: Goodbye Flagship Killers!
As my review comes to an end, its always nice to give readers a good conclusion on what we have found out during our full review of this unit. Based on our honest comment on this phone, we pretty much love it especially for the speed as it was dubbed as the #masterofspeed, If you are not really after the aesthetics of the phone, everything else is pretty good like the liquid cooling, the camera and the display are all on the up side as per price point. Now all I can say is that we are going to watch this phone give the flagship killers a run for their money.
The Pocophone F1 reminded me a lot about the first wave of Mi 3 which took the world by storm as the unit that catapulted Xiaomi to fame with its low cost high specs phone. The same tactic is deployed to the Poco F1 now and it is working like a charm for the company. It just feels so nostalgic to remember the Mi 3 haydays.
PocoPhone F1
The phone for this price is a bargain.