Poco F4 5G Review: True Successor to Poco F1?!

I still remember when Poco F1 was launched. Everyone went crazy with the fact that a mid-range smartphone came with a flagship level processor and performance. I myself bought the Poco F1 and made a bunch of videos about it. In a way Poco F1 helped my channel a lot.

But ever since then we have been waiting for the “True successor” to Poco F1. It’s been 4 years and Poco is calling this phone, the Poco F4, “A true successor to the Poco F1”. Well, is it tough? Let’s find out.

Table of Contents

Intro

This is the Poco F4. It has just been announced globally and yes they’re bringing this one to India as well. Poco says that this smartphone’s main inspiration has been the OG Poco F1. So the main question is, “Have they achieved it? Is this phone as good as the Poco F1?” Let’s try to find an answer to this.

Performance

We will start with performance. Under the hood Poco F4 comes with the Snapdragon 870 Processor. Along with that it has upto 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and upto 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. No microSD slot available. On the software side, this phone comes with MIUI 13 for POCO based on Android 12.

I feel that Snapdragon 870 is an awesome processor and better than the 888 or even the 8 Gen 1. The main problem with 888 and 8 Gen 1 is heating. I am coming from a Samsung Galaxy S22 which has the 8 Gen 1 and frankly the Poco F4 feels smoother and faster. They have done a great job in optimizing the performance for this smartphone.

This phone flys through day-to-day tasks like checking your email, replying to whatsapp messages or scrolling through reels. It doesn’t drop a sweat and the performance has been incredible. I am expecting this phone to come under 30k and for that price bracket, the performance is top-notch.

Also software feels polished. No major bugs or issues. You will get some pre-installed apps which you can easily uninstall. MIUI 13 has fixed a lot of issues and the experience is much better now. All-in-all performance and software wise this smartphone doesn’t disappoint.

Display

This is my favorite feature with the Poco F4 display. It comes with a 6.67′ FHD+ E4 AMOLED Display with a 120Hz Refresh Rate. It is a bright, colorful and fast display. Also the bezels all around are very thin which I do appreciate.

Consuming media on this display is an enjoyable experience. It supports Dolby Vision and HDR 10+. So you can watch HDR content on Netflix easily. I have been using this smartphone for the past couple of weeks and the display has been amazing. The contrast ratio is excellent, colors are good, viewing angles are great and its an immersive experience.

Also that 120Hz refresh rate is smooth af especially for system applications. With third-party apps like chrome or twitter it does struggle to keep up the 120 Hz refresh rate. But with the system apps it is buttery smooth. Also, the refresh rate adjusts dynamically based on what you’re doing, so that helps in saving some battery.

Battery and Charging

Talking about battery, the Poco F4 comes with a 4500mAh Battery with support for 67W Fast charging. And yes, you do get the charger inside the box.

This 4500mAh battery offers really good battery life. You can easily use it for a full day with some battery left towards the end of the day. For light users it can last 1 and a half days as well. Really good battery life in my opinion. Also, 67W fast charging is awesome. In 11 min it can go upto 50% of battery which is super convenient.

And lastly, It does not have any sort of wireless charging.

Cameras

This gets me to cameras. On the rear side there is a triple camera setup. 64MP Primary Camera with OIS, nice. Then an 8MP Ultra-Wide camera and finally our beloved 2MP Macro Camera. On the front side you get a 20MP Selfie Camera.

This phone clicks really good photos. The images are on the contrasty side. Main 64MP Omnivision sensor clicks really good images. Dynamic range is impressive even in tough conditions. Shadows and highlights are exposed properly. The images are detailed, you can easily crop into them while editing or even while shooting. Digital zooming upto 2X or 3X is easily possible without any major quality loss. The colors are also great. It doesn’t oversaturate the images which is a good sign.

As far as the ultra-wide angle camera goes, it brings in a field-of-view of 119 degrees and the perspective is excellent. But the photos are a little soft. Apart from that dynamic range is super impressive, colors are really good and photos do turn out to be great. Also, there is uniformity between colors from the main and ultra-wide cameras. That’s neat.

As far as portraits go, you can shoot some really good portrait shots. Edge detection is good and so is the background blur. Nice portrait shots. You do get some neat little portrait effects in the camera app as well.

The most disappointing camera is the 2MP macro. It is literally useless and at this point brands should either up their game or just use 2 cameras. Gimmicky cameras need to go.

For low-light scenes there is a dedicated night mode which works really well. It is available for the main as well as Ultra-wide cameras. You can shoot some awesome low-light shots with the Poco F4. Now here’s where the OIS helps. Optical Stabilization keeps the camera stable to shoot amazing images in low-light scenes even without night mode. That’s awesome.

Talking about OIS, you can shoot stable videos with the Poco F4. Rear camera can shoot upto 4K at 60fps. The video quality is good too. Detailed, stable and nice looking videos from the Poco F4. What about front camera videos, they’re great too. You can shoot upto 1080p at 30fps with the selfie camera.

As far as selfies go, they’re really good. Impressive dynamic range, detailed photos and natural skin tones. Selfies look good from the Poco F4.

All-in-all Poco F4 has a great camera setup. Lovely experience.

Design and Build

What about the design and build? Well I like the design and especially this green color. Looks absolutely stunning. This phone has squared off edges which I am not a fan of. I would much rather prefer a curved back panel. What do you guys prefer? Let me know in the comments down below.

As far as build goes, it has Glass on the front and back with a plastic frame. Front is protected by Gorilla Glass 5.

Other things

This gets me to other little things. The Poco F4 comes with a set of stereo speakers which sound really good. They do support Dolby Atmos as well. The speakers are loud and clear.

For biometric authentication it has a fingerprint sensor mounted on the power button. The fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate.

This phone also has the underrated IR blaster. Love that feature and you get NFC as well. NFC is awesome especially with Google Pay where you can use your smartphone as a Debit or Credit Card.

To sum it all up, Poco F4 is a complete package. But, Is it a true successor to Poco F1? I am going to say that the market has changed a lot since Poco F1. It is extremely difficult to build a Poco F1 again in today’s scenario. That’s mainly because every brand has a sub-brand now which is focused on the enthusiast crowd. Xiaomi has Poco, Oppo has Realme and Vivo has IQOO. Hence that’s why it is so difficult to build a Poco F1 level hype again.

But with that being said Poco F4 is a great phone. You should definitely consider it if you’re looking for a phone under 30,000 rupees.

Pricing and Availability

Poco F4 will be available from 27th June 2022 on Flipkart. Here are the prices:

6GB + 128GB: ₹27,999
8GB + 128GB: ₹29,999
12GB + 256GB: ₹33,999

You can also get launch offers which will bring the effective price of the base variant to ₹23,999. That’s awesome pricing.

Harsh Punjabi

I have always been passionate about technology. Trying out new gadgets like smartphones, laptops, headphones, etc. has always been very fascinating and one fine day, I decided to take this passion and turn it into something substantial. This is how technolobe was born.