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. When it comes to competing devices, the Poco F4 5G will be going head-to-head against the Realme GT Neo 2 5G, the iQoo Neo 6 5G, iQoo 7 and Motorola Edge 20 Pro just to name a few. Cut to the chase The simple fact is that Qualcomm still hasn’t replaced the Snapdragon 870 at the time of writing. This was an unusually capable mid-range chip for its time, and it’s still a very strong performer today in the Poco F4. The results of our standard battery rundown test are less favourable for the Poco F4, serving up the lowest result out of this selection and coming in roughly 10% less than its predecessor. To be clear, a score of over 19 hours isn’t bad by any stretch – you’ll happily get two days of moderate use out of it – but when most new iterations improve upon the battery life, this two-hour downgrade is still disappointing.

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. 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.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.

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. 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. Its general performance is just as great as you’d hope, with apps and multi-tasking transitions being far faster than those of the OPPO Find X5 Lite I used before the Poco, getting you the flagship experience I’d expect from a phone with this kind of power. 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).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. 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

The Poco F4 GT’s main camera is much better but, again, does not quite match up to what you can get elsewhere for the money. Tight natural textures like leaves and grass can look unnatural up close, particularly in anything less than great lighting. 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 Poco F4 GT is made in the style of dedicated gaming phones, like those from the Asus ROG series. It is not what many would define as attractive, but for those in for the ride, Xiaomi has nailed the style. The Poco F4 GT is not a long-lasting phone. It has a 4700mAh battery, which is a little smaller than the 5000mAh used in many mid-range Xiaomi phones and far smaller than the 6000mAh of the Asus ROG Phone 5s Pro.A few months ago I used a couple of MIUI phones in a row and got used to this style. Having used a couple of others phones since then, this change seems annoying and unintuitive all over again. Still, you will get used to it in time. The Poco F4 GT is part of a series from Xiaomi that appeals primarily for techies and mobile gamers. Early Poco phones were nigh-on unbeatable in the performance they offered for the money. The operating system runs on Android 12, with Xiaomi’s own MIUI 13 plastered over the top. Offering plenty of customisation options and avoiding the cluttered UI or excessive bloatware that plague some other OS skins, this is an accessible and user-friendly experience. Xiaomi Poco F4 review: Price and competition 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. 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.

On a more positive note, the Poco F4 GT’s general performance is excellent. It has the flagship zip that lets you jump from app to app snappily, and despite my reservations about performance, games run very well. Xiaomi’s processing does some heavy-lifting here, and its colour science is pretty punchy. Those vibrant colours are calling out to be shared, but they’re not exactly what you’d call authentic or natural.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. 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.