The Pocophone F1 is the best phone in its price range at the moment of reviewing it. Not only has Xiaomi been able to get a high-end phone with plenty of memory and sufficient and fast storage in the phone, but the screen is also great for a LCD, the battery life is excellent and the phone is very fast. The plastic housing does not break when the phone falls, although you can easily scratch plastic with, for example, keys. It has a 3.5mm jack, unlike many of the more expensive phones. However, NFC is lacking, it does not support the latest 4G gadgets and the built-in infrared scanner for face recognition does not yet work at the time of writing.

Pros Excellent price/performance ratio

Excellent battery life

Great screen

Fast software

Housing not vulnerable when falling

Great speakers

Negatives The front camera is disappointing

No NFC and 4×4 MiMo at 4G

Final Ratings: 9

Preface

It could have been better called the Inception phone. After all, Pocophone is the online brand of an online brand. See, some brands come with a sub-brand that they focus on a specific target group. In addition, they save money by investing little in building distribution and working with small marketing budgets.

For example, Oppo has OnePlus and in India now have Realme as online brands, while Huawei has been working with daughter brand Honor for many years. In the meantime, Xiaomi has outgrown that phase itself. It built up a distribution network in various countries and cooperated, for example with the parent company of drugstore Kruidvat. That kind of thing costs money and drives up the prices of phones.

That is why there was room for a new online brand within Xiaomi. That has become Pocophone. With the Redmi phones, Xiaomi became one of the most successful smart phone brands in the world in recent years, but the Mi phones never became true bestsellers. That was because there were few enthusiasts who bought the Mi smartphones; that market is in the hands of brands such as OnePlus.

OnePlus CEO Carl Pei said earlier this year that it was no longer possible to build a high-end phone for the current prices. The components have become too expensive.

Housing and screen

Finally! After we’ve only seen telephones with backs of glass and metal in recent times – especially glass – a manufacturer finally dares to give a back of a smart phone a practical material: plastic. Or, as Apple would say, unapologetically plastic. In addition to the variant tested by us, there is also a version with Kevlar rear.

Plastic has a few advantages over glass. First, it is less fragile, which makes the rear easier and more likely to survive a fall. Moreover, it is not slippery, so the phone does not just slide off the table if you are not paying attention. Wireless charging had been a possibility but is not included with this device.

There are also disadvantages: the casing does not feel as sturdy as many other smartphones, especially due to the lack of metal in the construction, such as on the sides. If you put a lot of strength, it can bend. This device is not, like some other smartphones, built like a tank. The buttons are on the right side and are fine; they click well and give great feedback.

Dimensions Poco Mi A2 OnePlus 6 P20 Pro Galaxy S9 Height 155.5 158.7 155.7 155.0 147.7 Width 75.3 75.4 75.4 73.9 68.7 Thickness 8.8 7.3 7.8 7.8 8.5 Weight 182g 166g 177g 180g 163g Screen 141x68mm

6.18 “ 136x68mm

5.99 “ 144x68mm

6.28 “ 139x67mm

6.1 “ 133x64mm

5.8 “

The F1 is not a small phone, but it is also not overly large compared to many competitors. If you want a smaller high-end smart phone, the best thing to do is to use devices like the Galaxy S9 or iPhone X – many other manufacturers often make phones that are around 15.5 x 7.5 cm in size.

The Pocophone holds well and there is little space in the case. A case is not necessary with this phone, unless you want to protect the screen or if you put it in a bag with keys or coins – because then the case will scratch. Protection of the display is advisable, because the screen is on the rest of the housing, making it extra vulnerable to a design where the screen is located.

The Pocophone has a notification LED, all under the screen. It is a small and subtle LED for those who like it. If you do not like it, you can switch it off in the settings.

One of the most important savings compared to many other high-end smartphones is the screen. It is not about an OLED, but an LCD. Lid screens are still a lot more expensive than variants with LCD. You can also see that from other manufacturers, who always put LCDs on the cheaper models.

It is a display with a notch at the top of the screen. It has a diagonal of 6.18 “and a resolution of 2246×1080 pixels, which is a screen ratio of around 18.7: 9. It is, in short, a long screen as you would expect from smartphones in 2018.

Maximum brightness Smartphone in cd / m² (higher is better) Samsung Galaxy S9 838 Huawei P20 679 Motorola Moto G6 Plus 609 OnePlus 6 509 Pocophone F1 505 Xiaomi Mi A2 462 Nokia 7 Plus 382

The maximum brightness is perfectly fine with 505cd / m2, although it is far from excellent. That also translates to visibility in direct sunlight. It’s nice to read, but real high-end smartphones generally do a bit better in this area.

Contrast Smartphone The contrast in proportion (higher is better) Pocophone F1 1521: 1 Xiaomi Mi A2 1491: 1 Huawei P20 1395: 1 Motorola Moto G6 Plus 1349: 1 Nokia 7 Plus 1190: 1

In addition to the maximum brightness, there are more elements that are better in many high-end smartphones. Especially the display of white does not go well – there is far too much blue in it. Strangely enough, the other colors are in good order. The contrast is also fine. This screen is all in all perfectly fine.

Hardware

One of the most striking differences between a Pocophone and a regular Xiaomi is the 3.5 mm jack. The Pocophone just has it, something that is different for a high-end smartphone, but for a device in its price range just normal. Xiaomi has left it out of the cheaper Mi A2 and the more expensive Mi 8.

The Pocophone uses two speakers for playing sound. One is to the right of the USB port, the other is the speaker above the screen that you also use for calling. The other cut-out on the left of the USB port is for the microphone and the ornamental.

The sound is good, although the speaker at the bottom is much louder than the one above the screen, which causes an unbalanced view. It is excellent for a phone in this price range. The sound from the 3.5 mm jack is also fine. The call quality is sufficient.

Xiaomi has put two slots in the Pocophone. The first is a nano sim, the second is a combination of nano sim and micro-sd card. This means you have to choose between a second sim or expandable storage. We prefer to see both, but with 64GB of storage for the cheapest version that is not a pressing problem for many people.

The fingerprint scanner is round and is located at the back, under the camera. It is easy to find thanks to an edge. It is a scanner from the Chinese brand Goodix, which we have seen on smartphones much more often in 2018. It works fine and can also wake up the phone.

The infrared scanner does work if you set the phone to another region, for example, India.

One of the points where Xiaomi has saved is the presence of antennas. The phone supports up to 2×3 mimo on 4g, where other Xiaomi phones with this soc 4×4 mimo on board. The specification seemed to indicate fewer antennas in the housing and that is true.

There is only one place where the antennas are and that is at the bottom of the housing. There are two antenna locations for WiFi, namely top left and top right. The antenna location is large, so there are at least two antennas in it.

The disadvantage of clustering all antennas at a location is that you can block the signal. Moreover, you often hold the phone at the bottom, which ensures that you almost always hand on one of the 4g antennas.

That would not matter if the range of that phone is tip-top, but that is not entirely true. The Pocophone F1 is at its highest average in this area, but in many cases, it loses faster signal than some other smartphones. The range, if it has a signal, seems to be OK; it looks a bit lower than for example a Galaxy S9 or OnePlus 6, but the difference is not shockingly large.

Another antenna that is missing is NFC. This means that mobile payment is not possible with this phone, just like other things you do with NFC, such as pairing devices or operating NFC stickers. It will not be something that many people miss, but the lack of it is a loss compared to the smartphones with which the Pocophone competes.

The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, equipped with cooling that dissipates heat – that is something that we have encountered in more and more telephones in recent years. The 845 is still the fastest that Qualcomm offers. That is based on Samsung’s 10nm process, just like the Snapdragon 835. The processor on this mobile platform, as Qualcomm calls it, has eight Kryo 385 cores, four of which work on a maximum of 2.7 GHz and four on 1 , 7GHz to save energy. The GPU is an Adreno 630, while the Pocophone has 6GB lpddr4x memory and 64GB ufs storage.

Battery life and software

Xiaomi likes to put big batteries in phones and the Pocophone is no exception. The phone is maybe 8.8 mm thick, but you get a 4000mAh battery in return. That is, in our humble opinion, a good compromise. The phone is not overly thick or heavy but does have a battery with sufficient capacity for even demanding users.

In daily use, the Pocophone keeps it perfectly busy for a day, but people who pay attention to specs such as a processor, memory, and storage will above average often be intensive users of their smartphones or even intensive gamers.

Battery life for web browsing (brightness @ 250cd / m²) Smartphone time in hours and minutes (higher is better) Pocophone F1 13h26m Huawei P20 11h14m Motorola Moto G6 Plus 11u2m Nokia 7 Plus 10h OnePlus 6 9h34m Xiaomi Mi A2 9h13m Samsung Galaxy S9 8h11m

The Pocophone makes optimal use of its powerful processor and large battery to keep browsing up for a long time. After all, browsing does not require much of the processor and so it can do its job without asking a lot of power. That leads to these extraordinary results.

PCMark Android – Work 2.0 (battery) Smartphone time in hours and minutes (higher is better) Pocophone F1 10h34m Huawei P20 10h8m Motorola Moto G6 Plus 8h46m OnePlus 6 8h11m Nokia 7 Plus 7.45m Samsung Galaxy S9 6h33m Xiaomi Mi A2 6h33m

Also at PCMark the Pocophone takes pole position, just to stay in F1 terms, although the difference with the competition is a lot smaller here. The general picture is clear, namely that this smartphone has an excellent battery life compared to the competition.

Percent full after 30 minutes Smartphone Increased battery charge in percentages (higher is better) Huawei P20 57 OnePlus 6 54 Samsung Galaxy S9 49 Motorola Moto G6 Plus 46 Pocophone F1 36 Nokia 7 Plus 34 Xiaomi Mi A2 34

The Pocophone runs on Miui 9.6. Miui is the Android edition of Xiaomi and is a radical adaptation to Android as it runs on, for example, Android One phones. The basic idea of the interface is the same, with a notification bar, home screen and app drawer, but the similarities do. Miui is a change in almost all other respects.

Also, something to be reckoned with: as with many other Chinese smartphones, video services like Netflix do not work in HD due to the lack of Widevine DRM support at level 1. It’s not a huge problem, because it looks great at 540p but it is a shame. YouTube does work in maximum resolution.

Cameras

One of the most important things that you often give up when buying a cheaper smartphone is the camera. That does not seem to be the case on paper, because the specs of the camera correspond to those of devices that are twice as expensive.

The app is the same as that Xiaomi always puts on phones, including those with Android One. It emulates the interface of Apple’s iPhones. There are options for, among other things, ‘AI camera’, a marketing technically interesting name for object recognition and the associated boost of, for example, contrast. We could not find support for shooting in raw and the manual mode has only a few options. The software does not take the enthusiastic photographer too seriously.

The primary sensor is the Sony IMX363, a sensor that is also included in the Vivo Nex phones, but also in Xiaomi’s own Mi 8 devices. It is a 1 / 2.55 “large sensor with pixels that are individually 1.4 microns in size, bringing you a total resolution of twelve megapixels, Xiaomi has put a f / 1.9 lens with a focal length of 3, 94mm, or 20mm in 35mm equivalent, has dual-pixel autofocus for quick focusing.

The rear secondary sensor is not intended to take pictures, but only to estimate depth so that the software can blur the background. It is a Samsung S5K5E8, a sensor that several manufacturers have used as front cameras in the past. It is a 1/5 “mini camera with a 1.12 micron pixel with a f / 2.0 lens in front of it, we suspect that Xiaomi still has stacks and is now used for this purpose.

The use of a secondary sensor only to estimate depth does not have many advantages in our view. After all, phones like the Pixel 2 do it with a single camera. If the second camera is really in use and has a different focus, that advantage is there. After all, you can make a portrait of ‘closer’ and that looks better.

The camera is crazy enough to suffer from a little shutter lag, something that we do not often see on smartphones from higher price ranges. That is a bit disappointing.

The selfies are disappointing in practice. It has a fixed focus, so with focus, it should never go wrong, but nevertheless, we have been able to make some vague selfies. Presumably, it is very sensitive to movement. We can also find little of good performance in low light. As soon as the sun was down, we could forget it outside and despite the fact that there was still some ambient light, it did not arrive at an acceptable picture.

Specifications

Brand Xiaomi Product Xiaomi Pocophone F1 (6GB ram) Mobile operating system Google Android 8.0 Display Screen diagonal 6.2 “ Resolution 2246×1080 Dots per inch 402dpi Relative screen size 82.8% Screen type LCD Input method Touchscreen Secondary screen No Technical features CPU / SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Number of cores 8 Processor speed 2.8GHz Memory size 6GB Storage capacity 64GB Memory card (Mobile) microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC Number of sims Dual SIM card slot 1 Nano sim SIM card slot 2 Nano sim Sim2 shared with microSD Yes Camera Camera resolution (rear) 12MP Aperture 1.9 Secondary camera resolution (rear) 5MP Aperture secondary camera (rear) 2 Camera resolution (front) 20MP Supported video resolution 3840×2160 (4K) Connections Mobile network 4G – LTE Frequency range (mobile) 800MHz, 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz, 2100MHz With WiFi Yes 5GHz support Yes Connection (WLAN) 802.11a, 802.11ac, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n Bluetooth Yes Bluetooth version Bluetooth 5.0 Mobile phone connector 3.5mm, USB 2.0 (Type-C) Functionality Messages E-mail, MMS, SMS Playback capability Audio, Video GPS Yes GSM functions Motion sensor (g-sensor), Gyro sensor, Compass, Quick charge, Vibration, Fingerprint scanner Battery and charger Battery capacity (mAh) 4.000mAh Battery type Li-Ion Battery interchangeable No Wireless charging No Fast-loading technique Quick Charge 3.0 Appearance Phone model Bar Dimensions, weight, and color Length 155.5mm Width 75.2mm Thickness 8.8mm Weight (grams) 182g

Conclusion

The Pocophone F1 is a unique smartphone. Xiaomi has succeeded in making a smartphone that can compete far beyond its price range. Other phones that cost about the same simply can not compete with this model. Phones like the Nokia 7 Plus and Huawei Mate 20 Lite lose it on many points to the F1.

It is also interesting how the Pocophone relates to, for example, the OnePlus 6. It costs almost 200 euros more, but also offers more; an OLED screen, nfc and a bare version of Android. The OnePlus 6 is also made of metal and glass, where the Pocophone is completely made of plastic. In cameras, the two do not differ much from each other. Those who found the OnePlus 6 too expensive now have a cheaper alternative.

Compared to even more expensive phones, the differences are even greater, but many people will not find these differences important. For more money, you get better cameras, a stronger built device, and an even better screen.

It is shocking how much Xiaomi has managed to stuff in this midrange smartphone. In addition to a high-end processor with fast memory and fast storage, there is an excellent LCD, acceptable cameras, a fingerprint scanner and unlocking via facial recognition with infrared, although that does not work yet. The 3.5mm jack is also on and the speakers are more than sufficient.

Every midrange phone saves on elements to reduce production costs. Xiaomi has made smart choices in search of enthusiasts’ favor. The market for midrange smartphones has a new king and other manufacturers will have to come from a good house to knock the Pocophone off the throne.