- Hey guys, this is Austin.
The iPhone XS is expensive.
Starting at $1,000 and reaching $1,450
for the maxed out Max,
if you see what I did there,
it's easy to say that this
is the most expensive flagship ever.
On the other hand, I recently took a look
at the cheapest flagship you can buy.
The $300 Pocophone F1.
Even in its $400 Armored configuration,
which is what I have here, it is an incredible bargain.
To be clear, I don't think anyone is
cross-shopping these two phones,
but I also don't think it's a crazy idea.
And sure, if you've got the kind of budget
for a high-end flagship like the iPhone,
by all means, go pick one up.
But I think for a lot of people,
if you can get a very similar experience
for a whole lot less, why wouldn't you?
Which brings us to the real question of this video.
Can a $400 Pocophone match up to a $1,000+ iPhone?
This is probably the strongest case for the iPhone XS.
It has incredibly nice hardware.
Not only is it rocking glass on front and back,
but unlike most phones which are made out of aluminum,
this has a stainless steel chassis.
Now, of course that's something
that's up to personal preference.
Some people won't like the idea that it is
going to scuff a little bit easier,
specifically with the silver edition,
but as far as I'm concerned, it looks nice
and gives you a nice sense of heft,
which feels very premium.
On the other hand, the Pocophone
is primarily made out of plastic.
Now that's not necessarily a bad thing.
If you take a look at the JerryRigEverything video,
he did a really solid test of seeing how durable it is
and it did hold up pretty well.
Unfortunately though, plastic is never
going to feel quite as premium
as stuff like stainless steel and glass.
To be fair, the Armored edition I have here
is a slight upgrade over the standard version,
as the back is made out of aramid fiber
as opposed to plastic.
It feels nice and it does give you a little
bit of grippy-ness that the iPhone lacks.
But there's a clear winner here in build quality.
It's the phone that costs three times more.
There are some advantages
to the Pocophone's hardware however.
USB-C versus Lightning is kind of a wash
as far as I'm concerned.
But what the Pocophone has that the iPhone lacks
is a headphone jack.
Unless you're TechRax and you drill one in,
the iPhone XS is going to be using
a whole lot of dongles and adapters to listen to music.
The downside is that you're losing basically
any kind of water resistance with the Pocophone F1,
something that the iPhone has no problems with
with a full IP68 water resistance.
Hey look, I didn't even press the screen.
It still works though.
You won't find wireless charging on the Pocophone,
something that is standard on an iPhone.
However, the Pocophone does have a fingerprint sensor
and to be fair, both phones have a pretty solid
implementation of Face Unlock.
The added advantage here is if you don't want to,
you know, stare at your phone to unlock it,
you can easily drop a finger on the button
and unlock it like that.
Let's be real though.
The vast majority of people are going to put these phones
in a case regardless, and the build quality is good enough
that neither of them really worry me all that much.
Now yeah, the Pocophone can't quite keep up
with the iPhone, but considering how much
more expensive this is, yeah, I would hope so.
Usually when it comes to a budget phone,
one of the biggest things you have to sacrifice
is performance, but that's actually the strong suit
of the Pocophone.
Inside you'll find a Snapdragon 845,
paired with 6 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage.
That's not a perfect comparison, but in context,
the iPhone only has 4 gigs of RAM, and 64 gigs of storage
on the base model.
And again,
it's $1,100.
That is really impressive for a phone
that's this much cheaper.
However, as soon as you start trying
to do any kind of benchmarks,
you're going to find the Pocophone
just can't hang with the iPhone.
It shouldn't be a huge surprise,
but not only is the Pocophone
going to be significantly slower than the XS,
but even the OnePlus 6 is going to be quicker,
even though it has basically the same spec.
It's much the same story on the graphics side.
The iPhone is a huge, huge leap over what's available
on the Android side, full stop.
And the Pocophone is no exception.
Surprise, surprise, this does apply to real world use.
So I don't think anyone would call the Pocophone slow,
but put it side by side with the iPhone
and you will notice that there is a responsive difference.
Responsive difference?
Responsiveness difference?
A difference is responsiveness, perhaps?
A responsive difference.
One thing I think is important to mention,
is that while the Pocophone is a global phone,
it's not necessarily meant for the U.S. market.
Don't get me wrong, it is available
to be purchased here in the U.S.,
but it doesn't have full LTE support for all the carriers.
It's pretty good on AT&T and T-Mobile
but Sprint and Verizon are a bit hit or miss.
This is all a lot more straightforward
than you might think.
Yes, the iPhone is faster,
and that really shouldn't be a surprise,
but when you consider the enormous price difference,
and the fact that the Pocophone can totally
hang with the iPhone in some ways,
and slightly surpasses it in others,
is incredibly impressive.
Take a look at the screens, and you're going to find that
they look very, very similar.
The Pocophone has a slightly smaller 6.2 inch display
whereas the iPhone is rocking a 6.5 inch panel,
but they are actually really close.
There's no doubting that both these phones
have quite the notch.
I can't complain too much.
So both the Poco and the iPhone do have,
not only their selfie cameras here,
but they also do have some face ID tech
to be able to unlock.
The issue here is that while the iPhone
looks pretty much uniform on the rest of it,
the Poco does have a pretty large chin.
Considering that it's a third of the price though,
I really can't complain too much.
Run the phones through our display tests
and what you'll find is something kind of surprising.
Yes, the iPhone has a terrific display,
and some of the things that our test doesn't really show
is the excellent viewing angles as well the contrast,
but that being said, color accuracy and brightness
on the Pocophone is right up there.
In addition to having a slightly higher screen resolution,
the real advantage for the iPhone is that it's using
an OLED panel versus LCD.
There's nothing wrong with a solid LCD like on the Poco
but you're not gonna get quite as vibrant
of a picture as on the iPhone.
Still though, I'm incredibly impressed
with just how close this gets.
Surprisingly, both the iPhone and Pocophone
share the exact same size 12 megapixel sensor.
Now mind you, there are some other advantages
with the iPhone,
including having optical image stabilization
as well as an actual telephoto lens,
but on paper, they look pretty close.
It might not look particularly exciting
but this actually should be reasonable test of the camera.
Not only is there a lot of detail on the tree,
we've got a lot of vibrant colors
as well as some serious dynamic range.
It does seem like the iPhone got the white balance
just a little bit more accurate.
Detail-wise, they're fairly close.
I will say that there's a little bit more dynamic range
on the iPhone here and it did do a good job
of, sort of, warming up the image,
but it's not a huge difference.
Oh, that's a much bigger difference.
The iPhone really was able to pull in a lot of that sky,
whereas the Pocophone totally blew it out.
Yeah, the Pocophone just does not hold the shadows
as well as the iPhone.
It also seems like it's a little bit
over-sharp in this photo.
The iPhone does look a little more natural.
It shouldn't be a huge surprise
that the iPhone has a better camera.
What I'm also curious about is the video capability.
This is what 4K video looks like
straight off of the Pocophone F1.
So of course, you guys can be the judge for yourself.
I will say that there's not quite
the same level of stabilization.
So if I move a little bit to the left and right,
you'll be able to tell.
But based on that and the audio, not bad?
On the other hand, this is what you're going to getting
on the iPhone XS Max.
Here we're recording at 4K 24 frames,
although it is important to note that
the iPhone will go all the up to 60.
But first of all, you're going to be getting stereo audio,
something new for the iPhone.
On top of that, to my eye, this is going to be
a little bit more of a natural image
with a little bit less, sort of, crunchiness
and a little bit less compression.
Next up we have the front facing cameras.
Whereas the iPhone has seven megapixels to work with,
the Pocophone has 20,
but is it actually any good?
I will say I like the iPhone colors a bit more
and there is more dynamic range,
but I gotta give this one to the Pocophone.
It's wider which means, of course,
you're going to be able to get more people in your selfies
if you're super popular like Ken.
But almost more importantly than that,
it's a nice sharp image.
Those extra megapixels are definitely doing something.
So, does the $400 Pocophone F1
match up to $1,100 iPhone XS Max?
Well subjectively, the iPhone is a better phone,
there is no doubt.
And in a lot of ways,
it's actually a pretty significant difference,
but in most ways that people care about,
I think the Pocophone is right there.
And it is incredibly impressive
that I'm even having this comparison, right?
You might think that, of course,
an iPhone's going to be way, way better
but consider it's nearly three times the price,
it is nowhere near three times the phone.