Top Problems of POCO F1 that Need to be Fixed

Last month, Xiaomi introduced a new smartphone brand called POCO (a..k.a POCOPHONE) by launching the POCO F1 smartphone. The device came powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 and included 6GB/8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of internal storage. It comes with a cheap polycarbonate body and is priced at Rs 20,900 for the base variant. While the company always generated poor sales with the flagship smartphones, the Snapdragon 845-powered POCO F1 should increase the company’s market share in the premium segment.

More than anything, the company is just playing the aggressive price tag. Even the LCD display with a huge notch looks sub-par when compared with other flagship devices available in the market. There are certainly better-looking devices at this price range, but all of them lacks the Snapdragon 845 chipset. Even the POCO F1 also came with its own set of issues. Firstly, the device lacked the Widevine L1 DRM support to stream HD content on apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

The Widevine L3 DRM on POCO F1 limits the playback resolution on these apps to just 540p. It also cant be fixed through an OTA update. Even if the company comes up with a fix, the user has to take their POCO F1 to the Xiaomi service center to get the HD playback support. More recently, the POCO F1 users have been reporting the screen bleeding issue. Even the Armoured Edition POCO F1 in our office also had this issue. While this is certainly a quality control issue, the company is yet to acknowledge it.

Earlier, the popular Asphalt 9 game particularly didn’t supported the POCO F1 smartphone. However, the issue is now resolved and the users are able to download and install directly from Playstore. The POCO F1 didn’t actually feature stereo speakers, instead, the earpiece was used as a secondary speaker to offer stereo-like effect. Since the primary speaker is more powerful than the secondary speaker, the POCO F1 doesn’t offer ideal stereo effect.

Amid all these issues, the POCO F1 with Snapdragon 845 chipset at Rs 20,999 does look a better deal than the Vivo V11 Pro or Nokia 7 Plus with Snapdragon 660 SoC at Rs 25,000 mark. Having said that, we would like to know your thoughts on this. Let us know, would you be interested in using a POCO F1 smartphone. Share your opinion with us by commenting down below or tweet us at @PhoneRadarBlog.