The POCO F4 was officially launched in India with hopes of getting back to that old image of good-performing phones for a good price since that is how POCO had entered the Indian market – through the F1. The brand image of POCO hasn’t remained the same and the reason for that has majorly been the long-term issues the phones have brought with them and then, the service centers not able to cater to the users.
Will POCO F4 change things for the users and change the image of POCO? The POCO X3 Pro was regarded as one of the best phones in its price range when it was launched, and it also easily became an instant favorite for gamers. But a few months after its launch, there are thousands of users complaining about the phone getting dead due to motherboard issues. The service centers aren’t accepting warranty for devices that have even minimal scratches on the external surface, which is leading to users ending up with nothing in hand after spending almost Rs. 20000 for a phone just a few months ago.
POCO F4 initially looks great with the specs that are offered in the phone, and with the price too. And for gaming, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor is one of the very stable ones, so the question about gaming is not going to be answered in a hard way – the phone is good enough for gaming, with 60FPS output being well maintained in BGMI but it isn’t the best of the lot.
We tested out the POCO F4 retail unit (purchased from Flipkart) against some of the similar powered phones including the Mi 11x, iQOO Neo 6, and Realme GT Neo 2, and while the POCO F4 performed quite well, the MIUI is still optimized to bring down the frames and throttle the performance after a certain temperature is reached near the CPU area. In fact, given how heating was a reason why POCO X3 Pro faced so many issues, one wouldn’t want to trust POCO F4 because if the phone ends up in a similar situation like the X3 Pro, the service hassles are something we would suggest users to avoid and that’s why POCO F4 is something one cannot go with.
Check out the gaming review of the POCO F4 with the FPS meter that is available in the developer settings.
If you have a service experience with POCO and it was pleasant, the POCO F4 then does seem like a good option considering that this isn’t only a performance-oriented device and since it is from a brand that supports bootloader unlocking and custom ROM installation, there would be a plethora of good ROMs available soon to enhance the performance. But otherwise, if you don’t want to have that dilemma about the service issues, it is better to go with something like the iQOO Neo 6 for gaming.
