From all the
phones that came out in 2018, the Pocophone F1 may be considered the most
disruptive. Xiaomi’s idea was simple. Make a phone with flagship internals at
the lowest price possible. For a starting
price of about US$330, you could get a
“flagship” grade phone. I took advantage of Lazada’s 11.11 sale, and together
with a credit card promo, I was able to get the 6GB/128GB variant for only
Php14,000 or about US$260. A fantastic
deal! Now, after using it for about two
weeks let’s see if this phone is the real deal.
The Good:
Price
Flagship
Performance
All day
battery life
USB C
IR Face
Unlock
The Bad:
Notch Screen
No NFC
No camera
OIS
No wireless
charging
Specs:
6.18” 18.7:9
display (2246 x 1080) FHD+
MIUI 10,
Android Oreo
Qualcomm®
Snapdragon™ 845
8x Qualcomm®
Kryo™ 385 cores, Up to 2.8 GHz
6GB RAM, 64/128/256GB
ROM
12+5MP dual
pixel AI dual camera, Main Camera Sony
IMX363 12MP, 1.4μm, 20MP front camera
Rear
fingerprint sensor
Battery:
4000mAh
Verdict:
The Pocophone
is one of those anomalies in the smartphone world. While almost every
manufacturer is moving away from plastic by using shiny glass and metal as
their casing material, Xiaomi gave simple marching orders to their engineers.
Make a phone with top internals and forget how it looks outside. In other
words, make a phone for phone nerds. And they did.
SnapDragon
845 processor with liquid cooling, up to 8GB RAM, up to 256GB Storage, Dual
SIM, SD Card expansion, USB C, headphone
jack, good camera and big ass 4000mAh battery. It’s like they asked me what I
wanted in a phone and then they built it.
Naturally,
they had to do some cost-cutting. The
phone is made out of plastic (actually
they call it polycarbonate), they used an LCD screen instead of AMOLED, no
wireless charging, no waterproofing and
no OIS in the camera. All of which are reasonable compromises to get it down to
this price point.
Look, a lot
of you might say that plastic is so 2015. It may very well be since my last
plastic phone was my Samsung S4. But in reality, the first thing you do with a
new phone is slap a rubber or plastic case on it anyway. The LCD screen may not
be a nice as an AMOLED but it’s still
very good and usable even under bright sunlight. You might think that this
phone is all about compromise but it even beats some flagship phones from the
likes of Samsung, LG, and even the so-called flagship killer OnePlus. Things like
liquid cooling, SD expansion, headphone jack, and
even the big battery are just some examples of features the others don’t have.
I also have to point out some negatives. Aside
from the plastic build (which doesn’t bother me), the notch on the LCD annoys
me. It cuts out notifications that you normally would see on the top of the
screen. Hopefully, Xiaomi can address it in future software updates. MIUI 10,
Xiaomi’s skin on top of Android may turn off some users. Like I said in
previous reviews, I was prepared to hate it, but after using it, it has grown
on me.
I have
discovered a lot of useful features like the Fullscreen
gestures, Dual SIM support, built-in spam blocker, MI Cloud and even MiMessage which is like iMessage on IOS. I also need to mention that the Pocophone has its own launcher which adds some additional
features on top of MIUI like having an App Drawer. And as an icing on the nerd
cake, those that like to unlock and install custom ROMs, Xiaomi has made it very
easy and you can find a lot of tutorials on YouTube. I was also able to install
the Google Pixel 3 camera, and it has
blown me away with its Night Sight feature. I also need to mention that the fingerprint scanner is lightning fast, IR face unlock works even in complete darkness, and the 4000mAh battery lasts the whole day
which makes up for not having wireless charging.
![]() |
Stock camera app |
![]() |
Using the Google Pixel Camera APK |
It may seem
that this review is all positive, and to be honest,
I have a hard time finding faults with
this phone, especially when I think of
how much I paid for it. The closest competitor I can think of is the Honor Play,
but even that will have a pretty hard
time competing. I’m sure by now other manufacturers
have taken notice which makes me excited to see what phones will be coming out
next year. But for now, the Pocophone F1 is without a doubt the ultimate bang
for your buck phone.