The Xiaomi Poco F1 (review), built of hard polycarbonate, is one tough smartphone. The budget flagship was put to a durability test by YouTuber JerryRigEverything where the phone was made to pass through a scratch test, bend test and burn test.
The Poco F1 touts 2.5D Gorilla Glass protection on top of the display, but it’s made entirely of plastic. The buttons are made of metal, and don’t seem to pop out of the body easily, unlike other Xiaomi phones the YouTuber has tested. When the phone put to scratch tests, it survived objects that are hard up to 6 Mohs. It basically means the Poco F1 can withstand scratches from keys or coins while the phone is in the pocket. The back, however, scratched quite easily and showed deep gashes after the torture. At least, it won’t shatter like phones with glass backs. The fingerprint sensor and the camera module were the only two things that didn’t get scratched at all.
The YouTube notes there’s little to no water resistance in the phone as the openings like the SIM tray doesn’t have rubber protection which is used to prevent liquids going inside the body. Needless to say this is a phone with flagship hardware offered at the price of a mid-ranger, which justifies the compromises. Use the phone far away from liquids. As for the burn test, the IPS LCD display showed signs of damage ten seconds after a high flame was held to it, but also recovered quite quickly.
The Poco F1’s structural integrity is also commendable. While phones like the Redmi Note 5 Pro got bent easily after a little force (the Mi 5 snapped it half), the Poco F1 did get bent out of shape after a little force, but continued to function normally.
The YouTuber concludes that the polycarbonate shell of the Poco F1 could make the smartphone one of most structurally sound smartphones made by Xiaomi. It touts the flagship Snapdragon 845 chipset along with LiquidCool technology, up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It starts from Rs 20,999 and runs on a customised MIUI 9.6 UI based on Android Oreo 8.0. We have reviewed and compared the smartphone’s performance with other flagship phones, and we are super impressed with it. Apart from a few (glaring) compromises here and there, the Poco F1 is a superb phone if you want pure performance on a tight budget.