The Poco F1 has been around for a while now. With two flash sales under its belt, the handset has been lapped up by a number of users. While the F1 is arguably among the best sub 30k smartphones you can buy today, several users have reported ‘issues’ with the devices ranging from the much talked about lack of Widevine L1 support to several software issues (some of which were fixed in two software updates). While most of these issues (save the Widevine issue) are fixable with the help of small OTA updates, at least a few batches of Poco F1 units seem to be plagued by a peculiar hardware issue.

The Poco F1’s screen bleed saga

By the looks of it, at least a handful of Poco F1 units seem to be facing screen bleed issues. The issue first came to light after users on XDA Forums started posting images of their Poco F1 with obvious screen bleed. Most of the affected units had issues near the bottom of the panel near the ‘chin’ when the LCD backlight is located.

As the thread gained in popularity, several other users also checked their Poco F1 units for screen bleed as well – only to realise that a few of their units too had the same problem. At the same time, there were a set of users who confirmed that their units did not have this issue. In fact, apart from the aforementioned thread on XDA Forums, people have created threads on Xiaomi’s own MIUI Forums and on Reddit.

What about our Review Unit?

While I did notice the screen bleed on my review unit when I got the Poco F1 first, I was under the assumption that this was because ours was not the retail unit. Companies usually iron out such issues in the final production version. Prima facie, it seems this did not happen with at least some of the initial Poco F1s that were sold in the first two flash sales.

I also borrowed a retail unit from my colleague to check if his phone had the issue, and to my dismay, it did. The saving grace, probably, was that the screen bleed on his unit wasn’t as bad as on my review unit. I was also contacted by a friend who had purchased the Poco F1 in the flash sale and his unit also ended up having the same issue. In fact, he was able to successfully get a replacement unit from Poco after he said he was unhappy with his original unit.

What is Xiaomi saying?

As of now Xiaomi and Poco have not officially responded to this issue. It is, therefore, unknown if the issue is widespread or if it affects only a select batch of F1s. Hopefully, we should have a clearer picture of the situation if and when Xiaomi officially responds.

Is your Poco F1 affected? How to check

In case you are the owner of a brand new Poco F1, you can also check for screen bleed. The easiest way to spot this is to switch to a dark theme and look at the bottom edge of the display. If you see the dark colours progressively turn pale towards the edges, this is mostly due to backlight bleeding. Please note that there are some themes that can mimic this effect.

Another way to test this is to go to the settings menu and ‘About Phone’ and then click ‘Kernel Version’ four times. You will enter the test mode after this. In this mode, select ‘Display’ following which the handset will display red, green and blue colours. Check if the colours turn pale towards the bottom edges. If this is easily noticeable even during daytime, your device does suffer from display bleed.

Should you still buy the Poco F1?

Absolutely. The Poco F1 is still one of the best smartphones that you can buy under Rs.30,000 today. Unless the display bleed issue is really bad, most laymen might not even notice this issue and should not really be a dealbreaker. I would, in fact, be more worried about the handset’s software issues. Do watch out for our Poco F1 review later this week where I shall talk about the pros and cons of this phone in detail.



