Xiaomi’s Pocophone lineup is known for the F1 that was launched two years ago that was lauded as a “flagship killer.” It had the same processor as the flagship phones at the time while still retailing for hundreds of dollars less than those flagship phones. Xiaomi is seeking to do the same thing with the Poco F2 Pro.
The Poco F2 Pro seems to have been based on the Xiaomi K30 Pro which is not bad at all. It has a glass sandwich design that looks quite premium. There is a 6.67″ 1080p OLED display that is HDR10+ certified and has no notch. To unlock the phone, there is an in-screen fingerprint scanner and the back features its impressive camera setup.
It runs on the flagship Snapdragon 865 processor and you can get it with either 6GB RAM/128GB or 8GB of RAM/256GB of internal storage. The RAM is the latest LPDDR5 and they are using the latest and incredibly fast UFS 3.1 storage, which is something we see on flagship phones.
The Poco F2 Pro has a 64MP main camera with a large 1/1.7″ sensor that seems oddly similar to what the Galaxy S20 has for the telephoto camera. there is a 13MP ultra wide angle camera, a 2MP depth sensor and a “tele-macro” 5MP camera that can take photos between 3cm and 7cm. The selfie camera is a 20MP unit that is on a motorized platform, which is my favourite implementation to avoid a notch. The Snapdragon 865 chip also allows it to shoot 8K video, which keeps it at par with Android flagships.
Connectivity is loaded on this phone. It has 5G thanks to the Snapdragon 865 and it has the latest Wi-Fi 6. It has a type C port with a 33W charger inside the box for fast charging. The battery is also pretty big. It has a massive 4,700mAh battery which has become a necessity for 5G phones. The Poco F2 also has NFC for those people that still use NFC in their daily lives. Somehow it still has an IR blaster and a headphone jack, which has become rare in the smartphone market.
The best thing about it is the price. This phone will start at 499 euros for the base 6GB RAM/ 128GB storage and 599 euros for the 8GB RAM/ 256GB storage variants.
This is indeed a ‘flagship killer’ but the problem is that it is just the Xiaomi K30 Pro but with a different name. They pretty match in terms of specifications and it makes sense since Poco is a subbrand of Xiaomi. However, it is still great that Xiaomi is able to bring such flagship-level specs at this price range.
