Alright, so today we are launching the Poco F1 with flagship specs at 20,000. How? How? How? And as time passed, we all lost hope. This is the flagship killer. Ah, kuch bhi. New flagship killer. Kuch bhi! Well, this phone might change that. You get the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection, and UFS 4 storage, and you get all of this for under 30,000. Of course, with bank offers and everything. It seems too good to be true, right?
Like, what’s the catch here? And don’t worry, catch deliver hoga. So you get a big box right here; you get the phone, a proper black case, some paperwork, a sim ejector tool, a 120-watt fast charger, and a and a Type A to Type C cable. This is very consumer-friendly unboxing, but before we get to the catch, there are three interesting things with this phone. Starting off first with the build and design of the phone, the moment you pick it up, it feels very light as well. See, it weighs around 179 grams. The phone is made out of polycarbonate back and polycarbonate frames, and the back has this texture. The design is quite minimal over here. Also, it comes in two colors, but personally, I prefer this black. It looks quite minimal and good, and talking about good, what is good is the display. So I was watching Madam Web on Netflix, and the experience was good. Now I’ll play the same movies side-by-side on the OnePlus 12R as well as the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. Also, I’ll play an HDR video side-by-side with these two phones and see that the Poco f6 here looks as good as the other two phones, and all of these are 35 and 40,000. Also, the display supports Dolby Vision, and you get dual stereo speakers that support Dolby Atmos.
Also, the peak brightness is 2400 nits. Now, outdoors, under direct sunlight, the display is bright enough that you can see the icons, text, and everything. It’s good of Poco to mention the high brightness mode, so it gets a high brightness mode of 1200 nits and a high brightness mode of nits rather than peak brightness. . Now, in terms of glass protection, you get Corning Oreo Glass Victus, which is really good in this price range. The second thing that I liked here is the software. This comes with Android 14 right out of the box, and it is running on Xiaomi’s HyperOS. HyperOS has refined the overall software experience here, like the look and feel, and the animations feel quite premium. It also has some really good features, like one of the features I really like, which is the back tab gesture, which you can find in the gesture shortcuts in additional settings. See here. You get options here to customize the double tap and triple tap. So, for the double tap, I have set the notification panel to come down, and for the triple tap, I have set the control center to appear. I found it quite useful because it makes the phone more one-handed to use. Another thing to note here is that you get the MIUI dialer app. So, there is no beep or announcement while you’re recording the call. I’m glad to have the MIUI dialer back. Along with these features, you get quite a bit of customization options in HyperOS. So, in my short usage, the overall software experience is good. I didn’t find any lag or software bugs, except if you see there are some pre-installed apps, but you can easily uninstall them right from the home screen. And in terms of ads, I didn’t find any such ad in the UI. In terms of software updates, you get 3 years of Android updates and 4 years of security updates.
Now, the reason for the smooth software is its performance. You get the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3, and it’s all top-of-the line specs: LPDDR5x RAM and UFS4 storage. The base variant of the Poco F6 starts at 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while some brands in some corners of the world are selling their flagship phones at 128GB of storage. Now, Snapdragon and its naming schemes—well, we already did a dedicated video on Snapdragon 8S Gen 3, but in simple words, Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 falls somewhere in between 8th Gen 2 and 8th Gen 3. Now, we ran AnTuTu benchmarks, which give an overall score to the phone’s CPU, RAM, etc. And it scored almost 14 lakhs, which is slightly better than the Snapdragon 8th Gen 2. And then we ran a CPU throttling test, and the graph was all green here. But these benchmarks and graphs don’t tell you the entire story. How about real-life usage? So, make sure we played first Genshin Impact, and we played it for half an hour to see how it performs and how the battery drains. So, even at high graphics, at 60 FPS, the gameplay was smooth, and the battery drain was around 10-12% in about half an hour, which is standard. And then, we continuously played Call of Duty for another half an hour, and we played it with medium graphics at an ultra frame rate of 120 FPS. And the gameplay was good, constantly at 120 FPS, and then again, the battery drain was around 13%. You also get Wild Boost 3.0. So, if you are in any game, you just have to flick from the top left, and you get a bunch of settings. So suppose if you have ordered your food from Zomato while you’re gaming, you just tap here and open Zomato; it opens in a pop-up, so you don’t have to quit the game to see your order status. Also, you get other settings like seeing FPS, changing voice, etc. Plus, there is also Ice Loop cooling technology, which is required if you’re using a flagship chip like the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3. Other than gaming, in normal usage, the phone is quite smooth. I was watching the RCB vs. CSK match on my phone while I was on a video call with Shorbik, and it could handle this task pretty easily. So overall, the performance here is good and the best that you can get in this price range.
Now, coming to the important catch: cameras. So, in terms of specs, you get these camera specs, and I’m glad that there’s no 2-megapixel BS. Now, we took some photos in the daylight. The sensor is sharp. If you see these photos or zoom into this chameleon photo, there are enough details. Even in human photos, the skin tone was good. For daylight, it is as yellow as it can be. However, in some photos, if you zoom in, there is a bit of over-sharpening. And we also took some low-light photos with it. Even though these photos are bright, color accuracy could have been better. You can record in 4K 60FPS on the main camera, and this is how the stabilization and mic quality are. It’s pretty windy out here for a change. Good for Delhi. On the front, you get a 20MP selfie camera that can record in 1080p at 60 fps. The selfies are sharp, supported mode, edge detection is good, but they are a bit flat. And there is also this bokeh option where you can add background blur to your photos after you have taken them. Another good thing about the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 is that it has on-device AI support. So see here if I keep it side by side with the Pixel and Samsung. And if I turn off the internet, Poco is still able to erase the objects. Whereas both Samsung and Pixel want you to have an internet connection to even use Magic Eraser, See, it automatically highlights the person, and you just have to tap on the cross button, and instantly it deletes the person. Done. Another AI feature that I liked was contactless gestures. As of now, it only works on Netflix and the in-built music app.
So I’ll play a movie on Netflix and see here that if I do this gesture, it increases the volume, and if I do this, it plays or pauses the movie. And if I do this, it goes forward and backward. So I found myself using it, especially while I was having my dinner and my hands were dirty, so I didn’t need to touch the screen to play and pause. And before you get to the conclusion, you get a 5000mAh battery, and in normal to heavy usage, the battery easily lasts one entire day. You get 90W charging, a charger included in the box, and it goes 100% in about 30 minutes. Also, you get an IR blaster so you can control your AC, your neighbor’s AC, or any mall AC that you use. So what’s the conclusion here? Is the Poco F6 the flagship killer we have been waiting for since the Poco F1? Well, I really like the pricing of the phone, the performance for the price that you get, the display, and everything else. The catch here is, although the camera
