Xiaomi’s sub-brand Pocophone’s first device, the Poco F1 will be up for sale via its third flash sale today. The smartphone will be available via Flipkart and Mi.com starting at 12 PM and alongside the regular memory and storage variants, the Armored edition of the handset with a kevlar back panel will also be up for grabs. The Poco F1 brings Qualcomm’s flagship processor, the Snapdragon 845, in a more affordable price range, taking on the likes of OnePlus 6 and the Asus Zenfone 5Z that also come equipped with the same Qualcomm chipset. Even if the device manages to bring flagship level performance, we stated in our review that it manages to deliver flagship-level performance but at the cost of making compromises in nearly every other area like the camera, design and display.
The Poco F1 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor and comes equipped with a Liquid Cooling technology to keep the temperatures in check. It features a 6.18-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD display with a 19:9 display aspect ratio. Following the trend, the company has introduced a notch on top of the device’s Corning Gorilla Glass display, which houses an earpiece, a proximity sensor, a 20MP camera sensor and an IR blaster for a more efficient Face Unlock when using the phone in low lighting conditions. The front-facing camera supports Pixel binning technology, Portrait Mode and HDR.
There is a vertically stacked rear camera setup on the Poco F1 come with a 12MP Sony IMX 363 primary sensor with f/1.8 aperture, dual pixel PDAF technology, Real-Time AI photography for scene recognition with the ability to recognise 209 scenes in 25 categories, AI backlight detection, portrait mode and HDR. The secondary camera has a 5MP sensor. To keep the costs low, Xiaomi has skipped on the Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) feature for the cameras.
The handset is powered by a 4,000mAh battery, which can be charged using the USB Type-C port. It supports Quick Charge 3.0 technology and comes with a fast charger in-the-box. The earpiece doubles as a speaker on the device and there is one more speaker at the bottom edge. Both the speakers have a Dual Smart Power Amplifier with Dirac HD Sound. The device runs on MIUI 9.6, which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo.
You can read our detailed review of the Poco F1 here.
The Poco F1 comes in three variants with prices starting at Rs 20,999 for the base version of 6GB RAM + 64GB storage. The phone’s 6GB RAM + 128GB storage variant is priced at Rs 23,999, while the 8GB RAM + 256GB storage version costs Rs 28,999. The aforementioned Armoured edition of the handset will also be available today. It comes equipped with 8GB RAM + 256GB storage and is priced at Rs 29,999.
Coming to the offers users will get with the Poco F1, Jio customers who purchase the smartphone will get to avail instant benefits of up to Rs 8,000. This amount is credited back to the buyer in the form of Rs 2,400 Instant Jio cashback and up to Rs 5,600 of instant discount on flights and hotel booking from Makemytrip.com. Additionally, they will also get to avail up to 6 TB of 4G Data. Buyers can also avail free 3-month subscription of Hungama Music. One can get the handset on a no-cost EMI when buying via Flipkart, along with 10 percent off when buying it via Axis Bank Buzz Credit Card.