Xiaomi Pocophone F1: Best Budget Smartphone

You’re looking for a great smartphone that can shoot good quality video but don’t want to spend around $1000 for a new iPhone, Samsung or Pixel. In that case, you might want to take a look at the Pocophone F1.

The Pocophone F1 is made by well known Chinese phone maker Xiaomi. The phone has become the surprise low budget smartphone hit. In specs, it compares to phones such as the OnePlus 6, but for less $.

In budget smartphones, the camera is usually one of the features that suffers from the cut in manufacture cost. However, this phone’s camera is really punching above its weight.

Well known smartphone camera tester DxOMark Image Labs have given the phone a rating of 90 for video (91 for camera overall). This puts it alongside an iPhone 8 and just below a Google Pixel 1.

Read more: All smartphones ranked for DxOMark video score.

Key Pocophone F1 camera specifications:

Dual-camera setup

Primary 12Mp 1/2.55-inch sensor with 1.4µm pixels, f/1.9-aperture lens

Secondary 5Mp sensor, f/2 lens for depth sensing

PDAF autofocus

Dual-LED flash

2160p/30fps video (1080p in default mode)

“The Pocophone F1 is a fantastic device in a number of ways, the combination of software and high-end hardware makes for a truly solid experience that is hard to dismiss.” 9to5Google.com

DxOMark rank the video performance by Category

Exposure (81)

Color (86)

Autofocus (95)

Texture (47)

Noise (73)

Artifacts (78)

Stabilization (84)

The area DxOMark says has most opportunity for improvement is in texture and noise performance. Fine detail is less compared to top of the range devices.

Aside from that, the phone performs very well. As far as video shooting is concerned, there are currently no competing smartphones at this price.

Check Price of Pocophone F1 on Amazon

Updates: Improved image quality

Since the DxOMark review, new software updates are bringing new improvements to the camera performance. This includes 4K video at 60 fps.

POCO fans, we heard you! Now enjoy recording 4K & 1080p videos at 60FPS on your #POCOF1. We have started rolling out an update for our MIUI for POCO beta users. Beta users – please do share feedback on the feedback app. Will be on stable version soon after the beta testing. pic.twitter.com/fWFnsIeLHR — C Manmohan (@cmanmohan) March 2, 2019

However, note that this may not yet have rolled out to all devices.

Video Test After Update

Recommended by FiLMiC Pro

Another reason to like this phone is that the guys at leading camera app FiLMiC Pro like it. If shooting video with this phone is important to you, then it’s good to know this particular android device is going to work well with FiLMiC.

However, it seems that 4K @ 60fps is not yet available using FiLMiC or other 3rd party camera apps.

Here’s some 4K Pocophone footage shot using FiLMiC pro.

Check Price of Pocophone F1 on Amazon

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