Alright the Pocophone F1 is without a doubt the best value on an Android
smartphone with the latest Snapdragon 845 processor retailing at just three
hundred dollars there are even reports that Xiaomi is selling this smartphone
at a loss in this review I'm going to cover the good and the bad
with the Pocophone F1 after using over a month let's go and take a look
Alright so what's good with the pocophone first the pocophone f1 has the
latest Snapdragon 845 processor I've played
hours of PubG on my poco phone and the Snapdragon 845 never lagged in any way
and the phone even has cooling mechanism to keep the phone cool
in fact my brand new pixel 3XL heats up more than the PocoPhone while
playing pubG I'll have a video on it but I can really notice the pixel 3XL
heating up while the pocophone keeps its cool.
If you want a fast smartphone with the latest Snapdragon processor without
spending more than $300, this is it.
And second, it's got a whopping 4000mAH battery
that is more than most flash ships and the Galaxy Note 9
also has 4000 mAh battery.
In my daily driving the Pocophone F1,
I've never had a problem with battery life
and I don't think you will either.
Third, it's got a killer camera.
It's got the same camera sensor as the Pixel 3.
Although it has no OIS,
if you do install the latest Pixel 3 camera,
which I have here. You're gonna get
killer low-light performance with HDR+ Enhanced.
And it's gonna make up for having no OS and I found that it does
keep up with the Mi8 just fine when you use it with the Pixel 3 camera.
And this is one of the few phones where Pixel 3 camera is available now.
A lot of other phones like V40 and Note 9 still have not gotten support for Pixel 3 camera.
It does also have manual mode for photos which allows you to really dial in what you want to do with the phone.
In fact, with a shutter speed of 32 seconds,
you can take star photos with it. Now it also has one of the best portrait modes,
especially for the front camera. Let me go ahead and demonstrate.
I did a full comparison of the front portrait mode and the back portrait mode against the
Galaxy S9, LG G7, and the Mi8. And the Pocophone had better selfie portrait
than the Galaxy S9 and LG G7. The back portrait shots are also excellente.
Now since there's no OIS, your 4k videos are gonna be shaky.
As you can see I'm just holding my phone here and you'll still get shakes, but that's not
necessarily a bad thing. With the money you save you can go ahead and grab a
gimbal like DJI Osmo 2, which I actually recommend for about 120 dollars.
Alright and you'll be able to take excellent 4k videos.
In fact, I did post my 4k video test with the Pocophone on my tripod and camera gear
and it did a terrific job.
Overall at $300, you're not gonna find a better
camera never mind keeping up close to the flagship phones today.
And this phone's camera is simply amazing.
And it's also got fingerprint scanner that's
quite fast.
One, two, three.
Which is literally instant. One ,two, three.
And it does have 3d facial recognition. Alright, right now I'm not able to show it it's
actually broken on MIUI 10 I'm running right now.
But it does run flawless on the stock MIUI 9.
Bottom line you get a fast fingerprint sensor along with
3d facial recognition, which is secure works in the dark.
For three hundred dollars you can't beat it.
Alright 5th, you got a pretty decent 1080p screen.
It is not the brightest out there but it's not something you're
gonna complain about.
And it's not 720p. It doesn't have the best viewing angles,
but it's definitely a decent screen I wouldn't call cheap or budget.
Alright 6th, it's got a pretty decent speaker and microphone.
Not the best, but you will have plenty of sound and microphone works well.
Nothing to complain about.
Here's a quick demo.
This is at its loudest setting.
Seventh, while most Xiaomi phones come with iPhone style MIUI launcher
which I hate because you don't have an app drawer,
you get a customized Pocophone launcher with the Pocophone.
You don't have that weird iPhone launcher and you don't want to bother
installing a third-party launcher. This is a small feature of the Pocophone
but I really dig that Xiaomi paid attention and made a new launcher for the pocophone.
Alright, lastly but not least, you can unlock the bootloader after 15 days
for the global version I have here.
You can see I have unlocked my bootloader
and basically from here I can go ahead and install any custom ROM.
If you don't like the software on it you can install the latest lineage OS
and even run the latest Android 9.0 Pie already.
Which is what I'm gonna do actually after I left it on me MIUI 10
because I wanted to do this review
with the MIUI software for the review.
But as soon as I'm done with this review,
I'm getting rid of that and installing lineageOS.
Now let's go and talk about what's bad with this phone.
First off if you live in the U.S. your
4G LTE coverage is nearly, very very spotty because it doesn't have all the
support for all the bands.
For example I am getting 4G right now. Now a lot of
times I will actually drop to edge,
which makes my phone completely unusable and
if you're on AT&T or T-Mobile in the US, you're gonna drop to edge a lot.
Alright, you're gonna have to live with that.
With that said if you live in Europe or Asia,
it supports all the bands there so you should be good to go.
Unfortunately, this phone was not built for US customers.
So definitely if you can live with that I would still recommend it
but if you can't live with that, definitely think again. Alright, also it does have a really good display
but it's not great when I use Pocophone versus my Mi8, my Galaxy Note 9, LG V40
I can see the difference even when watching the same 1080p video.
It's not a huge amount but I just do prefer using my other phones due to the better screen.
Also if you do use your phone in the sun often you're not gonna obviously get the
best screen. Alright, viewing angles are not that great but I think at 300 bucks
that can be a sacrifice. And obviously they need to cut costs somewhere but
that's one of my biggest complaints.
And also the notch, the notch is so huge I've got it turned off here let me go ahead and show you
the notch. With this phone you don't get any notifications. You'll have to
literally swipe down. Look at how many notifications I have, you'll get zero
notifications in your notification bar. That could be a problem I did get used
to it. I just got used to just swiping down if I need to check my notifications.
Also obviously you can use a vibration to know that you have notifications but
it's definitely an issue because even when you hide the notch, um you're not
gonna be able to see notifications.
So what they should have done is actually
when you hide the notch go ahead and bring down the whole screen a little bit.
Alright. So you can actually make use of
notifications. Now the notch is also a problem when you play games because it
will actually go over the game instead of cutting the notch out.
Like an area of the display, you can't see. it's not a huge deal but when playing
games like pubG, sometimes the enemy can be like over here and you're gonna miss
that little spot. You can already see that it's actually covering my left
button there. So this is a software issue they can fix and also if you do install
a custom ROM you can go ahead and install something like the Pixel
Experience ROM and be able to get rid of the notch area completely and also get
your notifications. I should have a video on that. Alright, lastly but not least,
this is not gonna win any Design Awards. It's not the sexiest phone you'll find
it's got a polycarbonate back it's a little on the thicker side if this was a
dog it would definitely be a very chubby puppy now with that said I don't
actually use it naked anyways if you use a case it shouldn't be a big problem and
with the case on I don't really care for it but this is definitely not a
head-turning phone again at 300 bucks who cares right
but yeah the design isn't exactly top quality but I do like the fact that it
doesn't look like an iPhone it actually has its own unique look unlike the Mi8.
Alright overall the Pocophone F1 it is incredibly cheap in terms of
how much you pay for a smartphone in fact it is so low I can't I can't
actually believe that it's only $300 at this price I would expect a 720p screen
with yesteryear's maybe Snapdragon 660 processor a shitty camera a shitty
touchscreen but for the money you pay you actually get a decent 1080p screen
the latest Snapdragon 845 processor that you can enjoy the latest games on
and you get a decent camera that keeps up with the latest flagships and
low-light performance is not that great but you can go and install the pixel 3
camera app and works fine it keeps up with the Mi8. I mean the pocophone f1 does
a lot of things that other flagships don't it's got a whopping 4 thousand
milliamp hour battery you got dual SIM support that also has dual 4G
connectivity for both SIMs and also 3d IR face recognition although you have to set
the region to India and even a microSD card something that's missing on pretty
much all other Xiaomi phones I mean it is built
for all day gaming and all day use the biggest question is this the best
smartphone I've used at $300 hell yes if you just don't have more than $300
you just can't go wrong with this smartphone I actually love the poco
phone especially playing games I mean it's nearly flawless