Poco, a new sub-brand from Xiaomi, unveiled its first smartphone in India: the Poco F1. The phone is aimed squarely at delivering the best performance and speed.
The Poco F1 features a hard-coated polycarbonate unibody design, with a reinforced internal frame structure. It is strange to see Xiaomi/Poco go with a hard plastic body instead of something more premium like aluminum or glass. However, Xiaomi/Poco says that since most people end up using a case, having a phone with a glass body makes little sense. The use of hard plastic allows Xiaomi to have a perfect curve at the rear and ensure the phone offers great in-hand feel.
The Poco F1 features a Snapdragon 845 chipset with its LiquidCool technology ensuring it is able to deliver peak sustained performance compared to other flagship phones with a Snapdragon 845 chipset. There’s also 6/8GB RAM, 64/256GB storage, and a microSD card slot.
The front of the phone houses a 20MP selfie camera along with an infrared blaster and other relevant sensors for face unlock. The use of an infrared sensor at the front will ensure that face unlock on the Poco F1 works even in low-light scenarios without any issue.
At the back of the Poco F1 is a dual-camera setup, with the primary sensor making use of Sony’s IMX363 12MP sensor featuring large 1.4um pixels. It also features Dual Pixel Autofocus and a f/2.0 aperture. The camera app has AI which is capable of recognizing 206 different scenes and tweaking the sharpness, color, contrast etc. accordingly. The front 20MP selfie camera has AI Beautify and makes use of pixel binning while taking selfies in low-light.
Thanks to the massive 4,000mAh battery, Poco says the handset will last a full day of heavy use. There’s also has Quick Charge 3.0 support which means the phone can charge to 50 percent in just 30 minutes. And unlike many other mid-range phones, Xiaomi/Poco actually bundles a Quick Charge 3.0 compatible charger with the device.
The Poco F1 runs on a specially customized version of MIUI dubbed Poco for MIUI. The OS is customized for performance and speed along with quick updates.
There’s also a new Poco launcher as a part of the new OS. It features an app drawer which can automatically group apps depending on their type. The launcher is highly customizable in nature and includes the ability to hide and password protect apps along with third-party icon pack support. The Poco launcher will also be making its way to Google Play as a beta starting from August 29.
The base of the OS has been turbocharged for faster animations, app loading times, and more. The OS also dedicates more resources to the foreground app for the optimum experience.
Poco is promising one security update at least every quarter for the F1, with the handset getting a Poco for MIUI build of Android Pie in Q4 this year. For now, the handset runs on Android 8.1 Oreo.
The Poco F1 will be available in Steel Blue, Roso Red, and Graphite Black colors.
The base variant of the Poco F1 is priced at Rs 20,999 and features 6GB RAM with 64GB storage. The 6GB RAM/128GB variant is priced at Rs 23,999. The high-end variant with 8GB RAM/256GB storage is priced at Rs 28,999.
Poco will also be launching an Armoured Edition of the F1. This variant of the device will feature a Kevlar back for people who want a phone made with more premium materials. It will feature 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage and its priced at Rs 29,999.
