POCO F2 PRO: FLAGSHIP KILLERS ARE NOT DEAD

Pocophone, a sub-brand of Xiaomi announced the Poco F2 Pro on May 12 in China. The Poco F2 Pro is a follow up to the Pocophone F1 which was released more than a year ago. The Pocophone F1 was successful due to its flagship specs and budget friendly price tag. It had specs comparable to the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 which was priced at almost three times the Pocophone F1. The lower price sure did come with some sacrifices in design and build quality. The Pocophone F1 came with an IPS LCD display, a plastic frame and back, no wireless charging and no water or dust resistant rating. 

The Poco F2 Pro (a rebranded Redmi K30 Pro) is an improvement on the Pocophone F1 with fewer sacrifices. The Poco F2 Pro comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 865 processor (paired with an Adreno™ 650 GPU) which is the fastest 5G capable chipset in the market. The Snapdragon™ 865 comes with LiquidCool 2.0 which will help cool down the processor to improve performance. LiquidCool 2.0 comes with the largest vapor chamber on a smartphone and three layers of graphite and graphene. 

The Poco F2 Pro comes with a 6.67” AMOLED screen with no distractions (92.7% screen to body ratio), protected by Corning®️ Gorilla®️ Glass 5 on the front and back. The screen refreshes at 60Hz with a fast touch sampling rate of 180Hz. The screen resolution is 1080 x 2400 pixels and supports HDR 10+. It has a maximum brightness of 800 nits in manual mode and 1200 nits in auto mode. The Poco F2 Pro comes in four different colours; Neon Blue, Phantom White, Cyber Grey and Electric Purple. The Cyber Grey and Electric Purple comes with a matte finish whiles the other two comes with a glossy finish. 

It come with a quad camera setup; the primary sensor is a Sony IMX686 at 64MP resolution. The main sensor can shoot videos at 8K (24fps) and 4K (60fps). It also has a 13MP ultra-wide angle lens at 123° and a Telemacro camera which can shoot at 2x optical zoom and also shoot macro images at 3-7cm distance. It also comes with a 2MP depth sensor to assist with portrait shots. It sports a 20MP pop up selfie camera which can shoot slow motion videos at a surprising 120fps. 

A 4,700mAh battery powers up the device. The device comes with a 30W charger in box which can power the device from 0% to 64% in 30 minutes and from 0% to 100% in 63 minutes. It comes with 5G connectivity and WIFI 6 (which promises theoretical speeds of 9.6GBps). It also comes with a headphone jack which is a rare feature in flagships now. Pricing starts at $500/€500 for the 6/128GB version and €600 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage.

In comparison to current flagships, the Poco F2 pro checks all the boxes for performance by delivering top level specs. Samsung Galaxy S20+ is priced at almost twice the price of the Poco F2 Pro. Even the OnePlus 8 Pro which has been the flagship killer until recently costs about $500 more with similar specs. The only sacrifices made was the absence of wireless charging and water and dust resistance rating. The Poco F2 Pro will probably beat any phone in the same price bracket and also beat most flagship in value for money.  It is a phone for power users who do not want to spend a lot of money for top performance