Hi all. 

Today we’re reviewing two things. My ability to review products and the Xiaomi Poco F3(also known as the Redmi K40 in India and the Xiaomi M11x in China). This unit was purchased with my own money at $556 at the time of writing and it is what I’d call a “flag-ship killer” or a “phone for the enthusiasts”.

We’ll get more into the definitions of those terms and why I think that but we’ve gotta talk about the hardware, the software, the phone’s body and the good and bad parts.

The Poco F3(we’re gonna call it this to keep things simple) comes in 2 hardware variants and in 3 colors. Midnight Black, Frosted White and Deep Ocean Blue. My unit is the Deep Ocean Blue. 

It sports a 6.67 inch AMOLED 120Hz display(which toggles between 60 and 120hz in certain applications to preserve battery) that is not only HDR10+ but also goes up to a whopping 1300 nits at peak brightness. This is all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chipset with the Adreno 650. This can be backed by either 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage or 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage. I opted for the latter as the retailer had both variants and the 8GB variant was only $50 more expensive over the 6GB variant.

So with the 870 chipset you get BT 5.1, WiFi 6, 5G modem built in (this isn’t the 865 situation where both the chipset and the 5G modem were separate, nope it’s integrated now in the 870 so more power savings here), aptX support for BT audio including low latency all on a 7nm process.

The 4520 mAh battery that powers this mighty phone is average as there are other handsets out there with bigger batteries than this. On the plus side, you can actually swap the battery without resorting to destructive methods or being yelled at by the phone's software(Apple I’m talking about you). If you do ever want to replace it, you simply heat the glass back, remove it gently, and there are literal pull tabs that make battery replacements nice and easy. It supports 33W fast charging which I haven’t used because my variant came with a 2 pin European effort and I don’t have any spare travel adapters(even though the retailer did include one, I don’t trust them and nor should you).

The phone’s body is covered in Gorilla Glass 5 on both front and back, a pre-applied screen protector and a case are included but I would avoid the included case and get a Spigen Tough Armor. The free transparent case is a nice gesture but it’s not really going to protect the phone from a drop. The phone has smooth curves around the sides making it a joy to hold. The power button(and fingerprint reader) are on the right hand side, with the volume rocker just above it. The buttons are very tactile with very satisfying clicks. You get dual firing stereo speakers, an IR blaster at the top, sim tray at the bottom with support for 2 sims which both can do 5G at the same time. There’s no headphone jack but you do get an USB-C to 3.5mm headphone dongle in the box.

The phone isn’t officially water resistant (no IP rating here) but there is a rubber gasket around the sim tray so don’t go taking this out in the rain unless you absolutely have to(The Spigen case I just mentioned would probably save it from most splashes, seriously get one if you plan to buy the Poco F3).

The fingerprint sensor is both fast, reliable and was a breeze to set up. You can configure it in 2 ways. Unlock on touch or unlock on press. There’s also support for unlocking with your face but in a pandemic world… I think we know.

Upon post setup and install you’ll be greeted with MIUI with the Poco Launcher. This can look alien at first but if you’re an avid iOS user. You’ll feel at home pretty quickly. Gestures support is here if you don’t like the nav buttons but in my experience the android gestures don’t seem to work that well so I opted back to using the nav bar.

My Poco F3 came with the global ROM of MIUI so the latest version right now is 12.5.4 with the August security patch on Android 11. Android 12 is coming out for this device. It’s pretty slick and fast and the 120hz display makes doing things on the Poco F3 pretty good. It has lots of options and customizations including super live wallpapers(these are both incredibly sick and also very good at draining the battery, you have been warned). Unfortunately that’s where the good ends on MIUI and now I have to talk about the bad.

There is a fair amount of bloatware and pre-installed games on the Poco F3. Fortunately you can remove it all but there are some that require a third party tool(thankfully the major offenders are not system apps so you do not need root to remove). I do recommend you debloat the device before using it otherwise the Poco F3 doesn’t actually go into deep sleep. The biggest offender is an app called Xiaomi Framework Service. This is the core of some MIUI services(if you’re into Mi Cloud or Mi Credit) but you really don’t need all of this and I would actually remove most things to regain some space and stop rogue processes from running (except MI wallpaper… you won’t be able to use wallpapers if you remove that).

There are also ads when you install something from the Play Store(which you can turn off thank goodness, people with ad blockers via DNS will never see them as well), you can’t use gestures if you use a different launcher(known bug), some apps still get restricted from pushing notifications(gmail is a notable example and I have to wake the phone up sometimes, also my smart watch doesn’t stay connected), and if you wish to unlock the boot loader, you must sign into the phone using a MI account and request to unlock the boot loader(which is a process in itself) and wait 7 days.

Don’t get me wrong here, there’s a lot to love about MIUI. Including the video toolbox which you can whitelist certain apps and record, cast, and even turn the screen off whilst audio still plays without interruption. The OS itself barely uses any RAM at all so you could get away with 6GB of RAM that the base model has. The software can be amazing at times, but some silly decisions and some incentives to cut price does bog it down(including a nasty bug where you cannot set dark mode for an app unless you set dark mode on the app first before changing the system exclusion so you don’t end up with a broken UI experience, this one is a nightmare).

We should really talk about performance now and quite frankly it’s the reason why I love the Poco F3. It’s fast. It’s really fast. App switching is fantastic and RAM management is also fantastic. Connectivity is solid sticking with 4G until it no longer could before switching to 3G. 5G works out of the box and the speeds are fantastic. Call quality is also fairly good and VoLTE works(RCG users REJOICE!) but you do need to use a secret code to disable the check(VoLTE so far works on Vodafone and on Spark NZ. No go on 2degrees but it could just be that it’s not live in Christchurch yet, mileage will vary). No VoWiFi support unfortunately :( which might be a deal breaker for some.

Now to the battery performance and this is easily a 2 day phone with medium usage even if you kept the bloat installed. You can extend it to almost 3 days with it debloated. You should be aware that the phone by default is very aggressive as sleeping apps that are in the background and not allowing background usage to happen, you can disable those restrictions easily enough. The phone does charge back up pretty quickly, even at 15 watts. There are also several battery saving modes the phone can do but you can also just make the phone go at full tilt 24/7, if you really want to.

My average screen on time was around 6-7 hours and this was with a mixture of Twitter scrolling, using the camera, checking emails, browsing on forums, some music streaming and some 5G action in between all on auto brightness and at 120Hz.

Now the cameras on this phone(which I intentionally did not mention earlier) are “okay”. There’s a 48MP sensor which at 12MP does 3 in 1 pixel binning. You can switch it to the 48MP mode if you have amazing light and it’s a really sunny day, it produces some amazing photos. And if you’re in any other condition, it’s gonna process the photo and make it look smooth. Almost too smooth to a point where some detail is lost. I will have a separate post containing some examples and if you zoom in you can see detail is lost and it looks either blurry and artificial or too sharp. I did try Open Camera and Gcam. Open Camera produced better results and looked more sharp but you cannot use the fully fledged 48MP sensor, you’re stuck at 12MP.

There is an Ultra wide camera here and it’s a 8MP effort but avoid it unless you really have to and you have perfect conditions. It’s not fantastic and there some detail lost at distances and even up close as well. There’s a macro camera as well (5MP) and it’s “fine”. 20MP selfie camera and it’s again “okay”. I don’t have any selfie pictures, mostly because I’m not a photogenic person but also I’ve been looking rough for the past few days so I shall not embarrass myself.

Both main and selfie cameras do 4K 30 FPS with HDR support and HEIC. There’s also slow motion at 1080p up to 960 FPS. There’s EIS. Two tone LED flash. Sound quality on video is good.

So why is this a “flagship killer” or a “phone for enthusiasts”? It has slightly slower flagship specs for much less of a price of an actual flagship. The 870 was a great choice for this phone and because it’s a qualcomm device and not a mediatek device. You not only get the option to unlock the bootloader, throw a custom rom on there and custom kernels to your liking, but you’re not restricted either(except for that 7 day timer). There are a lot of AOSP ROMS that will keep this device supported for longer even after Xiaomi is done supporting the device which if you really hate MIUI after 7 days, you should flash an AOSP ROM of your liking and make it yours, there are plenty of Pixel-like AOSP roms so you could just make it a glorified Pixel phone. If you really wanted to.

The performance of the Poco F3 and the killer MSRP makes this phone quite frankly a very good choice for people who are looking for that flagship killer phone or for people who love tweaking with their device. In my history of owning smartphones (Huawei GT3 > iPhone SE > Galaxy S9 > Huawei P30 > iPhone XR > Oneplus 8 > Galaxy S20+ and an iPhone 12), the Poco F3 has got to be probably the winner in value, performance, and choice. 

So Maxine, why did you move from a 12 to a Poco F3? Isn’t that worse in specs, camera performance and updates? Repairability, choice and the price. You get a lot of phone for 556 bucks(my Poco F3 came from Supero and is on sale for that price currently, otherwise it’s 699 for the 8GB/256GB variant that I have). I can replace the battery myself without my phone yelling at me that it’s not genuine(even if you use a genuine battery). I have the choice of going to another ROM if I don’t like MIUI anymore.

Xiaomi did a lot right here and at 699 NZD it’s non sale price (from Supero). It’s a steal. But I don’t blame you if you are dismayed by some of the bad things I talked about here. 

The Poco F3 is now my daily driver and I do not regret it. I’m releasing this now as I’ve made up my mind about MIUI and it’s not for me so I’ve got the AOSP route and I’ve switched to something called ArrowOS. MIUI was a different experience but in terms of my usage it’s not for me. But it probably is for others.

This review had no editorial review from Xiaomi, Supero or anyone else.