Talking about the camera in detail, the Poco F4 5G might sport a triple-camera setup with a 64MP primary lens with OIS. The smartphone could also come with an 8MP and 2MP camera lens. There is a possibility that these could be ultrawide and depth sensors. You could also expect to get a 20MP front-facing camera. There are three colour modes to choose from: Original, Saturated and Vivid. While Vivid is the recommended and default setting, colour purists will want to switch to the Original mode. We measured an sRGB gamut of 94% and a volume of 94.5% on this setting, which translates to a wide range of colours produced with terrific accuracy. The screen also holds up well in both indoor and outdoor use, hitting a peak brightness of 482cd/m² during testing. Recently the smartphone was also spotted on Geekbench which provided more insights into the variants launching soon. The results were those of the 12GB RAM model and we expect it to come with 256GB of internal storage. Other reports also hint that an 8GB model with 128GB storage is also slated to arrive in India. Vivid mode is used by default. This is an “intelligent” vibrant mode, in that while the app icons on your home screens will have eye-popping colour, when you go to the Photos app to look at shots taken with the camera, they won’t appear comically oversaturated. The 2-megapixel macro camera has actually been downgraded from the 5-megapixel Poco F3, rendering it even more pointless than before. That’s some feat.

Not that the Poco F4 looks radically new. It’s just a different shade of generic, with dual flat-glass surfaces, a flat-ish plastic rim, and a stepped camera module that may remind you of the Redmi Note 11 line to which the Poco is a not-so-distant cousin. There’s also something of last year’s Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite to the design, minus the attractively curvaceous camera module.Stamina wasn’t one of the strong suits of the Poco F3, but we had few complaints at the time. I don’t have any with the Poco F4 either. That’s pretty reassuring, especially when you consider that I switched the display to a permanent 120Hz almost straight out of the box, as I always do. If you keep the phone set to its default Auto state, you’ll buy yourself even more battery headroom.

Unfortunately there is a serious software issue that appears to affect some Poco F4 GTs at launch, which makes the phone cycle between recognising and not recognising the SIM card when inserted, causing it to crash so hard the phone resets after a handful of seconds. The Poco F4 5G has been confirmed to launch with the Snapdragon 870 chipset. The smartphone has been confirmed to launch with 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM. It is yet to be seen if there are lower model variants coming too. I had to factory reset the Poco F4 GT to solve this problem. And after letting the battery run down completely, the problem returned —this is something Xiaomi urgently needs to fix. Camera Perhaps the biggest thing that Xiaomi has changed up for the Poco F4 is its design. That’s not a bad thing in itself, given how nondescript the Poco F3 looked.

Proven Processor, Very Flat Housing

The Poco F4 GT is unusually clear outdoors, because the OLED is allowed to reach closer to its true peak brightness outdoors than most. Outdoors clarity is therefore very good. Indeed, Night mode shots here are improved, with greater detail and clarity. They’re still not on a par with shots snapped on the likes of the Pixel 6a, the OnePlus Nord 2T, or the Realme 9 Pro Plus, however.

The Stress Test version of Wild Life runs the same GPU-maxing scenes 20 times to see how the results change. They drop almost immediately, down to 45.6% of its peak power (4628 points). In addition to the HDR10+ offered by the Poco F3, the Poco F4 adds Dolby Vision support, giving you a broader range of HDR content to enjoy. In tandem with the powerful Dolby Atmos-compatible speakers, these credentials make the Poco F4 an excellent choice for streaming. Firing up Our Planet on Netflix to test it out, I found David Attenborough’s dulcet tones to be suitably soothing, and I’ve honestly never seen a penguin look better. Like the F3, the Poco F4’s battery life isn’t worth shouting about. The F4 uses a 4500mAh cell, and the battery struggled to power the phone through an entire day when set to the max refresh rate, playing plenty of games and using it out and about with 5G. An average Geekbench 5 multi-core score of 3178 handily beats both the OnePlus Nord 2T with its speedy MediaTek Dimensity 1300 and the Pixel 6a with its custom (and supposedly flagship) Tensor chip. In the GPU stakes, a Wild Life score of 4327 falls a little short of the OnePlus Nord 2T, which might offer a sign that it’s time for newer silicon in the Poco F5. Still, it’s a more than solid result. My most potent takeaway from the Poco F4 GT’s screen is how much it is willing to push display brightness in normal outdoors conditions. Many phones with top-quality mid-range displays will only use their true peak brightness when displaying HDR content, not when competing with super-bright sunlight.

While not a massive improvement on its predecessor, the Xiaomi Poco F4 is still a killer phone at a bargain price

Its macro camera is bad, just like all tertiary cameras of this spec. The ultrawide is mediocre too, producing images with washed-out mid-tones and significantly different colour character to the main camera’s photos. There’s a very noticeable step down in quality from the main camera, and images don’t hold up too well when you zoom in. While a bump in raw power would have been appreciated, the performance here is still decent, with around 20% gains on the OnePlus Nord 2T in the multicore tests and roughly a 13% edge on the Google Pixel 6a. The Poco F4 even manages to compete with the higher-tier Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset that powers the Motorola Moto G200. Fast charging is the partial solution we’re offered. The Poco F4 GT has 120W fast charging, which is superb. While it dips to 100W by its fourth minute on charge, 75W by the five minute mark, and dips further later on, its speed is still excellent.

I make that comparison because the Poco F4 GT is a dedicated gaming phone; it has a “gamer” design, and interesting buttons that emulate the feel and function of a gamepad’s triggers. The processor’s peak gaming performance is terrific, but you only get to experience it for minutes at a time. Well, unless you were to play outdoors in the snow.

Recently Viewed

The Poco F4 5G will officially be launched on June 23 at 5:30 PM during a global launch event. Poco had begun unveiling some of the specifications of the device and we've got a pretty good idea of the smartphone. A super-powered mid-price gaming phone is a good idea in theory, but it does not pan out perfectly here thanks to fairly severe performance throttling and mediocre battery life. Design Though the Poco F4 features a 10x digital zoom, there’s little reason to magnify that much, as even the 3x zoom loses quite a lot of detail. Below, you can see the wire mesh that sits over the facade but the intricacies of the stonework are smoothed out somewhat. It will do in a pinch, but nine times out of ten you’ll be better off just moving closer to your subject. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the Poco F4 uses a battery with a capacity that’s identical to the Poco F3. At 4500mAh, it’s also the same as the unit used in the OnePlus Nord 2T, and very similar to the Pixel 6a (on 4410mAh).