POCO F4 Review | Lightning Strikes Twice?

Poco f3. I mean the f3 was bloody, brilliant one of the best mid range mobiles of its time, but poco seems to be leaning particularly hard into the. If it aint broke, then dont fix it mantra. With this 2022 update, even relying on the exact same snapdragon chipset, to run the show so to see if it is a worthy purchase, ive had my sims slapped in there for over a week now testing it out. As my full time phones theres my in depth. Poco f4 review and for more on the latest and greatest tech. Please do poke subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers now this years model is yet another 6.7 inch heifer, although this time those edges are flat rather than curved im, not really sure why flat edged phones are so in style, because personally, i dont find it quite As palm pleasing definitely seems like a bit of a step backwards as far as the design goes, but its a minor grumble at best, the poco f4 also rocks a glossy finish around the back end, rather than a frosted design like the f3 and again, this feels, Like a bit of a downgrade as the shiny surface gets proper minion after youve, just fondled it for a couple of minutes, although hey you can always use that back end as a makeshift mirror to check for any egregious nose hairs before embarking on some social venture. Bloody hell its like jurassic park in there, you have to bust out the hedge trimmers again and ive got to say this black color choice, isnt particularly stimulating.

So it is good that poco also offers the f4 in green as well as silver, and so far that gorilla glass, 5 screen has held up pretty well. Despite the fact, ive been a total dick to it, ive been shoving this phone into the same pocket as other phones and keys and all kinds of other scratchy bits and so far touch, but only a couple of teeny tiny, very light. Nicks on that thing, and the final retail model should come with a pre installed screen protector as well, so new worries and i cant spy any scores on the arse end or the plastic engine either. So far, this phone has survived pretty much intact. I would have liked some proper, dedicated water resistance bit of ip rating for extra reassurance, but this thing is fine in the rain: absolutely noise if it gets a bit of a splashing, just dont drop it in your pint. Android 12 is the os of choice with xiaomis miui 13 launcher drizzled on top, and this doesnt bugger about with the ui too much added in some bonus features like the control center without removing much of the good stuff. The likes of the security app well worth a gander allowing you to block any nuisance, callers and anyone else that you just dont, really like very much youve also got an auto scan option for any downloads to make sure theres no nasty virus types lurking within got The likes of the game turbo feature which ill bang on about in a bit and overall got ta, say miui has behaved itself remarkably well here on the poco f4.

I did find that the swipe gestures were strangely unresponsive. My first couple of days with the phone but theyre, absolutely fine, now randomly im not really sure what was going on there and no other real junkiness to speak of. I didnt even really have any issues with the notifications. Sometimes me ui, can you know, take a little while to pop up a notification when a message does arrive, because the app is basically hibernating in the background, just not knowing what the is going on also means you have to go into the app settings and lock Them in place, so they dont hibernate, but i didnt have to do that here. On the f4, all worked, absolutely fine and apparently poco is offering two android os upgrades so android 13, then android 14. Beyond that and three miui launcher upgrades as well, which is pretty respectable. Of course, you may well end up hanging around waiting for those upgrades to actually drop and, as for security, updates, not exactly sure how timely those are going to be, but you know at least theres some commitments going on now. The engine mounted fingerprint sensor is all right. Occasionally it took a couple of ports to work and you got no chance if your fingers are damp or sticky, for whatever reason we dont judge here and youve always got face recognition as a backup. If you need it, my review model of the poco f4 was the 128 gig version, and i got to say that storage is filling up remarkably fast with all of the various apps and media that i have downloaded.

So its kind of annoying that theres no support from my crusty memory cards here on the poco f4, when you do finally run out of space, but you dont always have the option of just banging more cash at poco for the upgraded 256 gig model. If you think youre gon na be shooting a lot of video downloading a lot of media, all that kind of shenanigans now most mid range phones over 300 pounds. These days come packing a slick amoled screen and the poco f4 doesnt disappoint there. Their 6.67 inch full hd display is proper eye, candy boston, supremely sharp contrast, as well as full hdr, 10 plus and dolby vision support. I have very much enjoyed watching, shows and movies on this thing even for hours. At a time, while i was sat around at an airport, for instance, no complaints on the brightness front, either it scaled up and down automatically absolutely perfectly well whether i was outside in bright sunshine or inside, in a dimly lit environment and on that maximum brightness everything Remained clearly legible, even on one of those bright sunshiny days and the refresh rate maxes out at 120 hertz, you can just leave it on dynamic, so it will scale up to that when you are viewing supported content. Otherwise, you can also manually tweak it if you like, and the poco f4 stereo speaker setup is absolutely fine as well. Although i almost always had my headphones hooked up over bluetooth 5.

2 and i did notice a little bit of a crackling that will break up in the audio whenever i hibernate at the smartphone, while streaming via bluetooth. But apart from that, has been flawless performance. Even when ive been in a very densely packed area, absolutely swamped with other human beings and of course it would have been nice to have a headphone jack option on this thing, but hero bollocks to the lot of it. Now, while the poko f4 gt model is powered by qualcomms, mighty snapdragon 8gen1 poko went with the older 870 for the regular f4. The same chipset found in last years model, backed here by six gigs of ddr5 ram and yeah. It was kind of disappointing when they rolled out the specs list, and i saw it was the 870 yet again, but to be fair, its perfectly fine for pretty much everything you need. All of my apps run absolutely perfectly nor stumbles or jutters, and certainly no crashes or any other performance issues like that, and if you do want to get a bit of gaming on the go. Well, no worries there either the likes of gentian impact. If you do really push it, try and bump up the detail, levels and such forth, and you will see judders in the performance. Little drops in the frame rate. Well, just keep it in more sensible levels and itll run absolutely perfectly, even if youre gaming for a good hour or two thanks to the liquid cool tech 2.

0 with its big old vapor chamber, just having to keep all that nasty heat churning out away from the Innards and yes, youve got all those magnificent game. Turbo features with the new and improved layout, so its easier to find what you need. You can do anything in here from boosting the performance when needed clearing the memory. If you find the game struggling a bit, changing the display settings just all kinds of stuff, you got full 5g support, of course, courtesy that snapdragon 870 chipset, but i found that mobile streaming, wasnt quite smooth and responsive here on the pocket f4 versus some recent rivals. From likes of samsung likes the galaxy a53, but youve also got wi fi 6 support and certainly no complaints. There whatsoever for downloading massive movies or whopping grip, freaking apps, im, looking at you gentian impact and as for the battery life well, youve got a 4 500 billion power capacity cell crammed inside of here slightly smaller than some other recent pocket. Phones, like the x4 gt and the f4 gt, but no worries at all. If youre not a crazy, ultra demanding user, then you know youll easily make it through a full day on a single charge. I tended to get around six to seven hours of screen on time from a full charge, and that includes some audio streaming in the background as well, and the battery drain when that screen is off is minimal. Indeed, and if you do find, you need to give it a quick boost at any point, while it supports 67 watt turbo charging with the bundled adapter as well.

So just bang that lead and then youll have enough power to last you through the evening. If you find that it is wiped for whatever reason, unfortunately, no wireless charging support here on the poco f4, but its still a reasonably rare feature at this sort of mid range price. So lets end this merry wii jig, with a squint at the camera tech and like the poco f4 gt model, you once again have a 64 meg main camera sensor with optical image, stabilization to help out with your low light snaps a few of my shots taken Indoors, for instance, came out quite soft and warm and things can still get pretty fuzzy if your subject isnt completely still, but overall, the poco f4 performed admirably for a mid range mobile in better lighting. I got some pretty vivid photos with striking color reproduction, but nothing too funny. Thankfully, blue skies in particular come out really well so its just a shame. We dont see them more often here in the uk. No complaints with the amount of detail packed into every frame either despite the pixel binning photos, still look crisp enough when you check them out on an oversized monitor and i really enjoyed the results. I got from the portrait mode as well, which doesnt bulk up very often at all an 8 megapixel ultra wide angle. Shooter is also available on the back end of the poco f4. If you want to add a bit of drama to your shot or you simply just cant fit everything into frame and the detail levels on is fine.

Colors take a bit of a hit and the ultra wide does struggle more in lower light, but its all pretty typical for a mid range mobile and also like most of the mid range mobiles. The final lens in that triple n setup isnt a telephoto shooter its your bug, standard basic 2, megapixel macro shooter way, but using the primary camera. You do have a 64 meg max resolution mode that you can swap to and then crop into your photos to get a sort of fake zoom effect, its obviously not as good, but it does work in a pinch if the lighting isnt cac – and it goes pretty Standard with poko and xiaomi smartphones youve got a sack load of other bonus, camera mods you can play around with including a full on pro mode with raw support if thats your bag plus theres a video mode naturally, which can capture clips at up to 4k resolution. At either 30 or 60 frames per second in low light, the results aint too hot lots of focal popping noise to contend with, but the poco f4 again cops pretty well with strong light and sharp contrast. Image stabilization is decent at the 4k setting theres, not too much shake when you are moving and shooting at the same time, and the audio pickup is absolutely fine, as well as for the f4 20meg selfie shooter. Well, thats. All right. I got the occasional saturated pick when i was shooting outside if i wasnt too careful with my angles, but the camera can generally deal well with strong contrast and again.

Colors are warm indoors. You want to keep as still as possible in low light, so things dont get too blurry, but apart from that all good and you can shoot full hd video. If you want to using that selfie cam, i suddenly had no complaints when i was skyping or zooming with this smartphone. No one was complaining that they couldnt hear me properly or they couldnt see me properly either again. Deals pretty well with uh. Quite strong contrast. On occasion and in quite low light, its not terrible either so that, in a nutshell, is the fresh new poco f4 mid range mobile with some flagshippy style specs, and i got ta say a lot of mid range mobiles in 2022 are getting a little bit dull. Theyre not really massive upgrades over the previous offerings likes of samsungs galaxy a53 and the oneplus nord 2t, the poco f4, certainly no difference. So if youve already got the previous gen, the poco f3, there is no compelling reason here to upgrade whatsoever. In fact, in some respects, the design, for instance, is a bit of a step backwards. That said, if your blowers getting on a bit – and you want a replacement, the poco f4 is definitely an option worth considering. At this price point its a solid all rounder, i enjoyed using it as my handset for this past week or so and its you know pretty strong competition for the likes of that oneplus nord 2t and the galaxy a53, though ive got to see id have a Bit of a scout around online first and see if i could get the poco f3 for a much nicer price before committing to the f4, so you go thats.

My poco f4 review be great to hear what you guys think down in the comments below. Please do poke subscribe ding that notifications bell allow yourselves a ready, good rest of the week.