Chinese-based smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi, has taken the veil off its new ‘POCO’ smartphone sub-brand.
One of the features that made Xiaomi a standout company and catapulted the brand to the 4th largest smartphone manufacturer over the years is its aggressive marketing of affordable products with impressive specs. The newly launched POCO brand follows in the steps of the main Xiaomi brand but will bring onboard more premium specs at even cheaper price.
The pioneer smartphone of the POCO sub-brand, the Poco F1, has been launched in an event in India and from the specs if carries, we can tell that Xiaomi is off with a good start with POCO.
The POCO F1, in terms of aesthetic and design, packs the industry trending features that will surely entice buyers into purchasing a unit. The POCO F1 (or Pocophone) sports an oddly sized 6.18-inch LCD display with a 1080 x 2246 pixels resolution and a rectangular notch which neatly houses the device’s front camera, earpiece, proximity sensor, infrared lens and infrared lighting for face unlock in the dark.
The Pocophone is available in three colours: Graphite Black, Steel Blue and Rosso Red; all come in hard-coated polycarbonate unibody.
On the inside, the POCO F1 is fully equipped to flagship-standard. The device is even nicknamed the “Master of Speed”. This affordable device is powered by the latest version of Qualcomm’s system-on-chip, the Snapdragon 845 SoC — same chipset used on flagships like the OnePlus 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
In addition, it also sports up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The performance of the Pocophone is expected to be ? as Xiaomi confirmed that the device recorded an impressive AnTuTu benchmarking score of 291,302.
Powered by a 4,000mAh battery that comes with support for Quick Charge 3.0, the device has a standby time of up to 15 days. Other features of the POCO F1 include LiquidCool technology, Android Oreo 8.1, dual 12-megapixels Sony IMX363 sensor + 5-megapixels sensor on the rear, 20MP front-facing AI-powered selfie camera, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C and 3.5mm audio jack.
The Pocophone has been officially unveiled but sales will only commence August 29 at a starting price of $300. There are about four models of the device (on the basis of storage) and their prices are as follows:
- 64 GB storage + 6 GB RAM – Rs. 20,990 (~$300)
- 128 GB storage + 6 GB RAM – Rs. 23,999 (~$343)
- 256 GB storage + 8 GB RAM – Rs. 28,999 (~$415)
- Armoured Edition model with 256 GB storage + 8 GB RAM – Rs. 29,999 (~$429)