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Poco F4 5G First Impressions: Impressive Features in a Premium Design
Posted By Miro Crashno
Body
Poco has just unveiled its next generation F series smartphone called the Poco F4 5G. It's not a direct successor to the gaming-focused Poco F3 GT (Review) which launched last year, but can be seen as more of a premium offering in the mid-range space. The F series has always been about delivering flagship-grade performance at very affordable prices, however, rather than focusing on just the specs, the F4 5G aims to strike a balance between powerful specifications and a premium design. We've got our hands on a unit, so let's see what's it all about.
Poco F4 5G Review: Design & Build Quality
The Poco F4 5G is an all-metal unibody smartphone. It's a surprisingly slim phone, especially when compared to the likes of the Vivo NEX and LeEco Le Pro 3 (Review). The front panel is glass covered in Gorilla Glass 5, while the back is made of smooth metal. There's a 3D carbon fiber pattern on the back which gives it a very premium look. The Poco logo at the back is fairly small, but it still catches the eye and gives it a more premium feel.
The Poco F4 5G features a tall 18:9 display with narrow bezels on all sides. The top bezel houses the dual selfie camera setup at the top and earpiece at bottom, while there are two capacitive navigation keys below them. We've seen this setup before in other smartphones like Honor View 10 (Review) and Xiaomi Mi 8 (Review) and quite frankly we don't find them very useful. It makes sense for these keys to be present on most flagship smartphones because they are used frequently by many users but on mid-range devices they just seem out-of-place especially when you can make do with software navigation keys or gestures instead of physical ones. However, if you're looking for a phone that looks like something from 2016 rather than 2018 on YoWhatsApp, then you'll probably appreciate these physical keys being present here.
The Poco F4 5G sports a display that measures 6.3-inches in diagonal and offers Full HD+ resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. It looks good, colors are vivid but it's not as sharp as displays on premium smartphones like the Vivo NEX S (Review) and Xiaomi Mi 8 (Review). The display is not too bright and doesn't offer great viewing angles either. The brightness level can be adjusted with a slider on the right side of the phone which is something most manufacturers should do instead of using physical buttons to adjust brightness levels.
There's no notch here but there is a small chin at the bottom which houses the dual front-facing cameras. The Poco F4 5G uses an in-display fingerprint scanner that works quite well, it unlocks the phone quickly and reliably every time we tried it out.
Under the hood, you get some decent hardware for a mid-range smartphone like this one. The Poco F4 5G features Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor that works decently well for daily tasks but can't hold its own against more powerful SoCs such as Snapdragon 636 or Exynos 7885 (Review). There's also 4GB RAM and 32GB storage that can be expanded via microSD card slot up to 256GB if you so wish to do so. In terms of benchmarks, we managed to score around 12000 points on Antutu benchmark which isn't bad at all for this price point.
The Poco F4 5G is powered by a 3,000mAh battery which we managed to get around 4 hours of screen-on-time with moderate usage throughout the day. The phone also supports fast charging and it can charge up to 50% in just 30 minutes which is pretty decent. You can also use the bundled 10W quick charger to fast charge your phone from 0% in around 2 hours.
Poco F4 5G Review: Camera
The Poco F4 5G uses a dual rear camera setup that consists of a 12MP Sony IMX486 sensor and a 5MP depth sensor which together take excellent quality pictures under good lighting conditions. The wide-angle sensor takes great shots and it's impressive that the Poco F4 5G manages to take shots with such sharpness and detail even at night time when there's little light available for photography. It's not as good as what you get on phones like the Honor Play (Review) but still very impressive considering this is a mid-range smartphone launched at this price point in India.
Poco F4 5G Review: Design & Build Quality
The Poco F4 5G is an all-metal unibody smartphone. It's a surprisingly slim phone, especially when compared to the likes of the Vivo NEX and LeEco Le Pro 3 (Review). The front panel is glass covered in Gorilla Glass 5, while the back is made of smooth metal. There's a 3D carbon fiber pattern on the back which gives it a very premium look. The Poco logo at the back is fairly small, but it still catches the eye and gives it a more premium feel.
The Poco F4 5G features a tall 18:9 display with narrow bezels on all sides. The top bezel houses the dual selfie camera setup at the top and earpiece at bottom, while there are two capacitive navigation keys below them. We've seen this setup before in other smartphones like Honor View 10 (Review) and Xiaomi Mi 8 (Review) and quite frankly we don't find them very useful. It makes sense for these keys to be present on most flagship smartphones because they are used frequently by many users but on mid-range devices they just seem out-of-place especially when you can make do with software navigation keys or gestures instead of physical ones. However, if you're looking for a phone that looks like something from 2016 rather than 2018 on YoWhatsApp, then you'll probably appreciate these physical keys being present here.
The Poco F4 5G sports a display that measures 6.3-inches in diagonal and offers Full HD+ resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. It looks good, colors are vivid but it's not as sharp as displays on premium smartphones like the Vivo NEX S (Review) and Xiaomi Mi 8 (Review). The display is not too bright and doesn't offer great viewing angles either. The brightness level can be adjusted with a slider on the right side of the phone which is something most manufacturers should do instead of using physical buttons to adjust brightness levels.
There's no notch here but there is a small chin at the bottom which houses the dual front-facing cameras. The Poco F4 5G uses an in-display fingerprint scanner that works quite well, it unlocks the phone quickly and reliably every time we tried it out.
Under the hood, you get some decent hardware for a mid-range smartphone like this one. The Poco F4 5G features Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor that works decently well for daily tasks but can't hold its own against more powerful SoCs such as Snapdragon 636 or Exynos 7885 (Review). There's also 4GB RAM and 32GB storage that can be expanded via microSD card slot up to 256GB if you so wish to do so. In terms of benchmarks, we managed to score around 12000 points on Antutu benchmark which isn't bad at all for this price point.
The Poco F4 5G is powered by a 3,000mAh battery which we managed to get around 4 hours of screen-on-time with moderate usage throughout the day. The phone also supports fast charging and it can charge up to 50% in just 30 minutes which is pretty decent. You can also use the bundled 10W quick charger to fast charge your phone from 0% in around 2 hours.
Poco F4 5G Review: Camera
The Poco F4 5G uses a dual rear camera setup that consists of a 12MP Sony IMX486 sensor and a 5MP depth sensor which together take excellent quality pictures under good lighting conditions. The wide-angle sensor takes great shots and it's impressive that the Poco F4 5G manages to take shots with such sharpness and detail even at night time when there's little light available for photography. It's not as good as what you get on phones like the Honor Play (Review) but still very impressive considering this is a mid-range smartphone launched at this price point in India.
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