POCO recently launched the POCO C71 smartphone in India at a price of Rs 6,499. This smartphone succeeds the POCO C61 that was launched in India at a starting price of Rs 6,999 in March 2024. The newly launched POCO C71 comes with a bigger display, a bigger battery and better cameras.
Despite its upgrades, the POCO C71 still has a few shortcomings. In this article, we break down all the reasons to buy it and the reasons you might want to skip it based on our detailed review.
Table of Contents
Reasons to buy the POCO C71
Standout design
The POCO C71 comes with a dual-tone split-grid finish at the back in Desert Gold, Cool Blue, and Power Black colour variants. It measures 171.79 x 77.80 x 8.26 mm and it weighs 193g. Additionally, it comes with IP52 rated dust and water protection and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor.
The POCO C71 features a standout design that is hard to miss. The grill-like pattern at the back coupled with the metal-like finish not only make the design pop but it’s also adept at resisting fingerprint marks and smudges. The phone also feels light in hands making it ideal to be used during longer durations.
Big display
The POCO C71 features a large 6.88-inch HD+ display (with a 120Hz refresh rate, a resolution of 720 x 1640 pixels, a touch sampling rate of 240Hz and a peak brightness of 600 nits. For comparison, the POCO C61 comes with a 6.71-inch display while its competitor, the itel A80 (review), comes with a 6.67-inch display.
Based on our review, the POCO C71’s large display coupled with its high refresh rate and brightness delivers a decent visual experience in indoor lighting conditions. While visibility does take a bit of hit under direct sunlight, this issue isn’t exactly unique to this smartphone.
Android 15 GO
The POCO C71 runs Android 15 (GO Edition) out-of-the-box. It will get two years of Android updates and four years of software updates. We found out that the overall user experience is clean and clutter free. While there are no AI-based features, owing to the GO Edition Android experience, users won’t run into any issues during everyday tasks.
Clean OS experience
The POCO C71 offers a clean Android experience with minimum number of pre-installed apps. The POCO C71 comes with 36 pre-installed apps while the itel A80 comes with the 41 pre-installed apps. It also offers two years of security updates compared to itel A80. In our experience, the POCO C71’s long term support is easily the best in its price segment.
Reasons to skip the POCO C71
Average cameras
The POCO C71 has a 32MP camera at the back and an 8MP front-facing camera. In our experience, this smartphone delivers decent shots in a well-lit environment if you have the patience for stability. We also noticed that while it delivers punchy colours and balanced exposure in ample light, the level of details that it offers can be significantly improved.
The POCO C71 comes with a 5,200mAh battery with 15W charging technology. While the battery performed well in our benchmark tests, the charging was a real pain point. The phone takes over two hours to go from 20 percent charge to 100 percent charge.
POCO C71 Images
