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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. Peak gaming performance is fantastic, netting 10140 points in 3D Mark’s Wild Life benchmark. This is even more abstracted from real-world than a benchmark score usually is, though, as power is massively throttled during successive runs. This kind of throttling happens in every phone I’ve used with the Snapdragon SoC, but it is worse there than in most. Perhaps the most important job of a gaming phone is to maintain good performance. But after a few minutes the Poco F4 GT’s dips below that of the Realme GT 3 Neo, for example, a phone with much less of a gaming focus. More impressive is that the Poco F4 proved to be the best choice from the comparators when it comes to gaming, with an outstanding result of 114fps in the GFXBench Manhattan 3 onscreen test, where none of the others made it into triple figures. Offscreen results also saw an impressive showing of 140fps – a figure that only the Google Pixel 6a even comes close to. The Poco F4 easily handled any game I threw at it, smoothly capturing everything from the fast-paced racing action of Asphalt 9: Legends to the simple delights of Candy Crush Saga. 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).
Its macro camera is bad, just like all tertiary cameras of this spec. The ultrawide is mediocre too, producing images with washed-out mid-tones and significantly different colour character to the main camera’s photos. There’s a very noticeable step down in quality from the main camera, and images don’t hold up too well when you zoom in. 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.
While not a massive improvement on its predecessor, the Xiaomi Poco F4 is still a killer phone at a bargain price
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. 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.
Xiaomi has changed up the design of the Poco F4, but it’s left the display alone. Considering this 6.67-inch AMOLED screen was one of the standout components of the Poco F3, it’s tough to paint that as a negative. Additionally, the smartphone will come with NFC support, dual-band Wi-Fi and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Targetted as a gaming device, the Poco F4 5G might also feature an X-axis vibration motor too for an immersive gaming experience. 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. 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. The Poco F4 GT has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. While Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, this is currently the most powerful SoC in this series actually available in phones you can buy at the time of release.Even after dark, the camera holds up well. The night mode effectively brightened the moonlit scene, keeping the sky reasonably free of noise and showing the glow of the moon and the planet without any obnoxious lens flares. The 8-megapixel ultrawide camera seems to be business as usual – which translates as not particularly great. Detail drops off significantly compared to the main sensor, particularly at the edges; dynamic range is limited, and I noticed blue sky artifacts when shooting on a clear day. 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. 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.
Compared to its predecessor, the Poco F4’s build is more of a tweak than an overhaul, shedding a millimetre here and there for its 163 x 76 x 7.7mm dimensions, and weighing in one gram lighter than the F3, at 195g. The Poco F4 still has a lot to offer elsewhere, too, with a 120Hz AMOLED display, an improved 64MP main camera and a nippy 67W fast charger. 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. Triangular indents sit in the camera housing, the finish on the rear cover, while the camera flash LED sits inside a lightning strike-shaped cutout. My most potent takeaway from the Poco F4 GT’s screen is how much it is willing to push display brightness in normal outdoors conditions. Many phones with top-quality mid-range displays will only use their true peak brightness when displaying HDR content, not when competing with super-bright sunlight. 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.
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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 runs Realme’s MIUI 13 software on top of Android 12, the latest version at the time of review. It looks good, but this is one of the quirkier custom interfaces around. For example, messes with the notifications drop down, using left-right swipes to let you switch between the function toggles and your notifications. Fast charging is the partial solution we’re offered. The Poco F4 GT has 120W fast charging, which is superb. While it dips to 100W by its fourth minute on charge, 75W by the five minute mark, and dips further later on, its speed is still excellent. The Poco F4 5G has been confirmed to launch with the Snapdragon 870 chipset. The smartphone has been confirmed to launch with 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM. It is yet to be seen if there are lower model variants coming too.
It’s a great idea, and zones are set per game. I played Fortnite, using them to jump and shoot, and retro favourite Hill Climb Racing to control the entire game. They work well and feel sturdy. That they retract into the body avoids accidental presses, and you can set them to act as shortcuts when not playing a game. That said, the ergonomics here aren’t even at the same level as something like the Razer Kishi, which plugs two halves of a gamepad onto your phone. That’s pretty reassuring, especially when you consider that I switched the display to a permanent 120Hz almost straight out of the box, as I always do. If you keep the phone set to its default Auto state, you’ll buy yourself even more battery headroom. In addition to the HDR10+ offered by the Poco F3, the Poco F4 adds Dolby Vision support, giving you a broader range of HDR content to enjoy. In tandem with the powerful Dolby Atmos-compatible speakers, these credentials make the Poco F4 an excellent choice for streaming. Firing up Our Planet on Netflix to test it out, I found David Attenborough’s dulcet tones to be suitably soothing, and I’ve honestly never seen a penguin look better.
Before buying the Xiaomi Poco F4
Unfortunately there is a serious software issue that appears to affect some Poco F4 GTs at launch, which makes the phone cycle between recognising and not recognising the SIM card when inserted, causing it to crash so hard the phone resets after a handful of seconds. Stamina wasn’t one of the strong suits of the Poco F3, but we had few complaints at the time. I don’t have any with the Poco F4 either. 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 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. 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.
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