OPINION : The mid - range market has been gathering steam over the past few years , benefiting from the employment of trickled - down flagship technical school to immensely ameliorate the experience on offering – all without that exchange premium monetary value tatter .
That intend thatmid - mountain range phonesare get close and nigher to their flagship brethren , and with the release of the Poco F6 and Poco F6 Pro , that interruption is smaller than ever .
Pocophone , the Xiaomi sub - brand , has a bit of a reputation for undercut the competition with impressive ironware . One of its first phones , thePocophone F1 , caused a stir at release in 2018 because it featured a flagship - level chipset despite costing just £ 309 , well beat phones that cost upwards of £ 300 more in the benchmark section .
It ’s a trend that Pocophone has go on with other late favourite like thePoco X6 Pro , a £ 369 smartphone with a premium vegan leather design , firm battery spirit , fast 67W tear , and theMediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra , a chipset usually find in premium phone around the £ 600 cross .
That was telling enough , but the young Poco F6 and Poco F6 Pro really kick thing up a pass .
countenance ’s start with the steady Poco F6 . It ’s a earphone that Poco claims is focused on high-pitched operation for gamers , with an impressive specification to oppose , the newspaper headline of which is the inclusion of theSnapdragon 8s Gen 3chipset .
While this is n’t quite as knock-down as the flagshipSnapdragon 8 Gen 3found in the the like of theSamsung Galaxy S24 Ultra , it ’s notthatfar off .
In fact , when I spoke to a Qualcomm repp about the chipset at its launch in April , he explained that the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 sits somewhere between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 8 Gen 3 in terms of performance , complete with premium features like supporting for on - machine GenAI capabilities .
For setting , the only other phone in the westerly market to feature that chipset flop now is theMotorola Edge 50 Ultra , Motorola ’s top - end smartphone for 2024 , which comes in at a coolheaded £ 849 .
It ’s easy to write it off as a garish phone with an expensive chipset , but it ’s not just the Poco F6 ’s chipset that fend out compared to the competition . It sports a 6.67 - inch AMOLED 1.2 K screen with a 120Hz refresh rate along with support for HDR10 + and Dolby Vision , a 2400nit peak luminosity , and Gorilla Glass Victus protection .
It ’s even a premium charge experience with support for Xiaomi ’s 90W HyperCharge technical school , and to really seal the deal , the charger come in the corner . There are plenitude of 2024 flagship that you ca n’t say that about .
All this tech paints a picture of a phone that could easily sell for £ 600 , if not a little more , but the Poco F6 has an RRP of just £ 399 . In fact , during theearly bird sale , it can be recover for as small as £ 339 .
That ’s already telling , but things get even more fanciful with its bigger brother , the Poco F6 Pro .
It ooze even more of a exchange premium facial expression with an all - glass - and - metal design , but it ’s more than just a knockout .
Take the display for good example ; it sports a similarly sized 6.67 - inch AMOLED to its cheaper sib but crank up things up a nick with a smattering of truly premium tech like a 120Hz refresh pace , support for 12 - fleck colour , Dolby Vision and HDR10 + support , a whopping 4000nit peak brightness level and a pixel - pack WQHD+ ( 1440 x 3200 ) resolution .
The latter , in particular , is something you ’d normally only find on flagships like the Galaxy S24 Ultra andOnePlus 12 .
It also sports a similarly premium chipset to the regular Poco F6 with theSnapdragon 8 Gen 2 , the flagship chipset of choice for flagships in 2023 . It might not bethefastest around right on now , but it ’ll fall pretty near , especially when paired with either 12- or 16 GB of LPDDRX5 random memory and up to 1 TB of UFS 4.0 storage .
There ’s also an telling 50MP main camera with the premium Light Fusion 800 sensor , praised for its impressive active range , although the accompanying 8MP ultrawide and 2MP macro lenses postulate a footling tender loving care before competing with flagship - story contest .
at long last , the Poco F6 Pro takes the degenerate charging experience and crank it upeven furtherwith 120W HyperCharge reinforcement , with Poco take a full care only takes 19 minutes . And , like the regular F6 , the 120W HyperCharge battery charger comes in the box , detached of charge .
Again , look at the specification shroud , this is a phone that you ’d ask to be somewhere magnetic north of £ 700 – but the Poco F6 Pro starts at just £ 499 , and can be discover for as trivial as £ 449 during the former bird sales .
Of course , the Poco F6 and Poco F6 Pro are somewhat of a rareness in the mid - range smartphone market , with most others trailing far behind , but releases like this could force the hand of manufacturers to really up their secret plan when it come up to affordable smartphone tech .
If not , then Pocophone has a real probability of clean house up the mid - range securities industry in 2024 with the Poco F6 and F6 Pro .
