POCO F1

Let's start with the biggest highlight of the POCO F1 – its flagship-grade internals. The handset proves that the Snapdragon 845 SoC isn't just reserved for premium offerings. Yes, even though the phone is priced in the upper mid-range, it draws power from Qualcomm's top-tier chipset. The 10nm octa-core chip is mated to 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM, with the latter version being the most affordable device with such a RAM capacity. And as you can expect, the performance is simply flawless. I'm reviewing the higher-end model and the F1 literally flies through anything thrown at it with utmost ease. There's nary an instance of lag while scrolling between screens, jumping in and out of apps or running heavy apps or games. With excellent software optimisation, there's usually more than 5GB spare memory on RAM on the phone.

From the fascia, the POCO F1 looks just like any other tall smartphone with a notch up top. The screen extends to the corners, the uniformity of which is broken by a cut-out up top and a small chin at the bottom. That said, the notch on the debut handset from Xiaomi's sub-brand is sizeable and unlike other notch-toting displays, is quite noticeable while watching videos or playing games.

The first time I started using the POCO F1, I got confused whether the smartphone is running stock Android with a custom theme. That isn't the case, but it's the next best thing however, as the handset boots Oreo 8.1-based MIUI 9.6, which offers stock Android-like characteristics thanks to the POCO Launcher. You see, there's a dedicated app launcher instead of just placing all the installed apps on the homescreen. And the way you can access the app drawer is exactly the same as on stock Android – swiping up from the homescreen. Interestingly, the menu not only offers the ability to quickly search for apps with a search bar in the bottom (you can also sort apps by means of the colour of their icons, though I'm not sure if it'll be faster than typing the name directly) or swipe to see apps automatically sorted on the basis of various categories. You can change the placement of these categories or remove them altogether as well. The notification drawer is also similar to what you'll find in the vanilla iteration of Google's mobile OS. Moreover, breaking away from its slow schedule of bringing MIUI to the latest iteration of Android, the brand has already promised an update to Android P by Q4 of this year.

In terms of imagery, the POCO F1 ships with 12-megapixel and 5MP snappers on the back. The primary sensor comes with a large pixel size of 1.4 μm and f/1.9 aperture, while the secondary lens helps in capturing depth information to offer better portraits. With the use of dual-pixel autofocus, the phone promises faster focusing speeds as well as better performance in dim settings. The shooters also use AI smarts to detect the scene being captured and enhance the output basis the subject.

While Xiaomi's Redmi Note smartphones offer powerful battery capacities (usually 4,000mAh), the company's flagship offerings usually come with smaller batteries. That's not the case with the POCO F1 however. The handset packs in a beefy 4,000mAh cell ensuring that you won't need to look for a charger during the middle of the day. Charged fully in the morning, the device was easily able to continue throughout the entire day even with my heavy usage consisting of streaming podcasts, watching videos, some amount of gaming, 20 to 30 minutes of calls, with 4G / Wi-Fi turned on constantly and the phone was also connected to my smartwatch via Bluetooth. I was usually able to get more than 4 hours and 30 minutes of screen-on time, which is quite impressive.

The base model of the POCO F1 is priced at a lucrative price tag of Rs 20,999, while the 6GB RAM + 128GB storage variant will set you back by Rs 23,999. The top-end model on the other hand, carries a price tag of Rs 28,999. Then there's the Armoured edition – the one I've reviewed – which has a sticker price of Rs 29,999. All the variants of the F1 will be available to buy from Flipkart and Mi.com starting August 29th.