A ‘Little’ Phone with Global Aspirations
Should you buy an expensive, flagship phone and use
it for several years? Or should you buy a cheaper phone and compromise on
performance — but retain the advantage of being able to upgrade it in a year or
two? It’s a big dilemma for many smartphone buyers but the fact of the matter
is, we need to replace phones often because they wear out. Wouldn’t it be great
to have your cake and eat it too?
Poco means little in Spanish — as a little division
within Xiaomi, the Poco team has an important task: to make Xiaomi mainstream!
The F1 is their first product, designed from the ground up to solve problems
(read: gaps) in the smartphone space. After the first launch in India, they’re
taking the Pocophone F1 to 62 more countries. Globally, the brand will be
called Pocophone while in India, they’re sticking to Poco to keep it simple.
In case you’re wondering, Poco will benefit from
Xioami’s strengths — it will be made in India (in one of their six factories)
and sold online on Flipkart and Mi.com. Plus, it inherits the 1000+
service centers and the goodwill of a brand that has earned a top spot in the
Indian market in just four years.
But we’re excited about this phone for one important
reason: it’s the cheapest phone with the flagship Snapdragon 845 chipset and
because it brings a whole new level of performance to the mid-range segment.
The RAM it uses is DDR4X type and the 64/128/256GB storage is the UFS 2.1 type
— both are the faster kinds used in premium phones. However, at a starting
price of ₹20,999 (for
6/64GB), any consumer who was looking at a midrange phone will obviously start
aiming higher.
Apart from the insane value proposition with the
flagship chipset, there are a few things that set the Poco F1 apart. First is
the 4,000mAh battery. You don’t normally find such huge batteries in flagship
phones. We got a full day of battery life (8am to 10pm) with between 7 to 8
hours of screen on time. Next is the liquid cooling technology. Performance is
one thing but sustained performance is another. A high performance chipset like
the Snapdragon 845 will start with a bang but it will start to ‘throttle’ or
reduce performance if it starts overheating. A copper heatsink in the F1 helps
dissipate heat faster from the processor which allows it to sustain peak
performance for longer durations — such as long gaming sessions on PUBG or
Arena of Valor. Third is IR assisted face unlock. In a typical face unlock
scenario, you need a lot of light for it to work. In low light, some phones
will light up the screen bright white in an effort to recognize your face. The
F1 has a front facing IR emitter in the notch. It emits light that only the
camera can see and the end result is that you can unlock your face even in
complete darkness.
So how did they do it? The red, blue and black Poco F1
variants are all polycarbonate (plastic) phones, including the frame. This is a
substantial cost saving not just in material but also in development costs such
as designing the 4G antennas and other radios. The notch type screen is FHD+
resolution and high quality but the bezels are a bit on the thicker side for
this price point. This sort of bucks the trend and allows Poco to make the F1
the cheapest SD845 phone in the world.
For the people who still want premium materials, the
Armored Edition (available in 8/256GB only) has a Kevlar aramid fiber back
panel — the same material used in bullet proof vests. Not only does it look
great, it also resists fingerprints/ scratches, is durable and anti-slip on any
surface (including your hand). Coming to the camera, the F1 is no slouch. The
12MP primary sensor uses an f1.9 aparture and large 1.4 micron pixels for
better low light shots. It also does great portrait photos and offers a full
manual mode. For video, it can shoot slow-motion, time lapse, and 4K 30fps. It
doesn’t include any optical stabilization but it does have EIS for video. The
MiUI interface deserves special mention too — it’s been tweaked for performance
now. It has an app drawer, supports icon packs and offers loads of
customization.
Xiaomi has proved before that it knows the pulse of
the Indian consumer — with Poco, they’re only cementing that bond. This phone
is going to be a sure-fire hit and that brings us to what is probably the only
downside — it’s going to be really hard to buy thanks to weekly flash sales (at
least at first). Good luck!
Hitesh.
Bhagat@timesgroup.com
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