Reviews of Xiaomi Poco F4 GT phone, price, technical specifications, design, screen, software, hardware, battery life and charging and other specifications of this phone. Checking the technical specifications of the latest mid-range Xiaomi phone.

Review of Xiaomi Poco F4 GT phone, price and technical specifications

Introduction

Gaming phones: They are like regular phones, but more for gaming. What does this even mean? What makes a game phone a gaming phone? More performance? Better cooling (sometimes with dedicated fans either internally or externally attached)? More game-oriented features like dedicated buttons? A design that makes gaming bold? RGB lights? All of the above?

What is a gaming phone? And is the Poco F4 GT a gaming phone? Does that mean it’s only good for professional gamers or can regular people enjoy it? There are really too many questions. In this article, we are going to examine exactly this: Of course, ordinary people can buy this device and enjoy it. It’s not like there’s such a thing as “overperformance.” 

Poco’s GT line boasts ‘gaming’, but it does so in a quieter tone than other device families – think Red Magics, ROG Phones and the like. These are all gaming phones, but they’re different, and the Poco F4 GT seems to be on the tamer side of things, especially if you get it in any color that isn’t yellow.

Gaming aside, this phone also came with the flagship chipset of its time, so it could easily fall into the category of ‘flagship killer’ or ‘budget flagship’. So is it great at any of them, or is it trying to be too many things to too many people without actually being great at any of them?

This is what we set out to find out. We’ll say this from the start: this will not be a game-focused review. None of our long-term reviews have ever been done, and we’re not starting now. Most people overseas aren’t heavy mobile gamers, but most people there probably wouldn’t mind knowing if the Poco F4 GT could do well for them at its reasonable price. And not necessarily thanks to its game pieces, that is. But it can definitely be nice to have them.

So let’s dig in and find out what the Poco F4 GT is all about, this is the first time we’ve reviewed a gaming phone at length, and it’s also the first time we’ve fully reviewed a device from the Poco GT line. So let’s check it properly.

Xiaomi Poco F4 GT phone design review

This might strike a very interesting balance for many people – for example, gamers who have office jobs and don’t want their phone to stand out too much while still offering gaming looks and features? This is certainly a very niche niche, but perhaps you can think of some others as well.

The point here is that there’s a theme to the design, and it’s on target, but it doesn’t go so far as to make the entire product off-putting to those who aren’t in the demographic that’s clearly being targeted here.

From the front, the Poco F4 GT looks just like any other mid-range or budget flagship device that has come out in the last year or two, and that’s all we can say about it. There’s a hole for the selfie camera, the screen is flat, the bezels are reasonably small (though the chin is bigger than most), and now let’s look elsewhere.

You can also see Xiaomi 13T Pro review, price and specifications

On the right is where things get really interesting as it’s busier than what you’d normally see on a Poco phone. It’s so crowded, in fact, that the volume rocker has to be moved to the left, even though it’s on the right on other Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco phones. And that’s to open the game’s magnetic pop-ups – one at the top and one at the bottom. Will gamers like these? Maybe.

If you’re not a gamer you’ll hate them? Well, it’s…complicated. The slide bits used to lock and unlock the triggers are always there, though they look and feel like buttons. While using this phone, your fingers are constantly touching them and it may or may not bother you.

The same goes for the placement of the volume rocker – other brands like Oppo have always had the volume buttons on the left side, and that’s a personal preference. For what it’s worth, the volume rocker on the left side was pretty easy for this reviewer to get used to.

On the other hand, the trigger latch is never felt. Another point is that any case you might want to use requires an inordinate amount of cutting on the right side, which ends up making it rather flimsy. The one that comes in the box is thin and flimsy to begin with and so that definitely doesn’t help matters. On the contrary, it was one of the less enjoyable carrying cases we’ve had in the past few years.

We still very much appreciate the fact that there’s one in the box, don’t get me wrong. It’s a niche device from a fairly niche brand, so you’re unlikely to get a ton of third-party case options anyway. We just wish Poco would go back to the way it did a year or two ago, because they were more solid and felt anything but sloppy.

Flip over the Poco F4 GT, and its back design is a mix of two languages: the size and position of the camera island seems to be copied and pasted from many recent phones, but the design of the LED flash and lines on the back begs to be gaming. Expose this phone. And this design shows the gaming nature of this phone without being as bold as some competing options.

We really like the LED flash design. It’s unusual but in a fun and interesting way. On the other hand, the nonsensical “freezing speediest” text on Camera Island is pretty weird. We should probably welcome the fact that the keyword “AI” doesn’t exist, but in all seriousness, please Chinese companies stop doing this. No one has ever bought or will buy a Poco F4 GT because “freezing speediest” sounds enticing, but many people might buy it despite how bad it sounds.

However, since our unit is destined for EU shores, there’s plenty of the usual writing on the back, while the Poco logo is oddly out of place here compared to some of the brand’s more affordable offerings. that we are used to the font, has subsided.

The glass back of this phone really gives you the feeling of a glass back and because of its matte, this phone is slippery. I hope you are not surprised by this. The symmetry of the rear design lines is welcome, plus nice little touches – like the fact that the volume rocker design mimics the center line as well as the camera island. Smooth edges are a trend (thanks Apple!), and Poco couldn’t hold back. We do not agree or disagree with them. We don’t feel like they make a significant difference in use for a device like this, as there’s far less “frame” to hold on the Poco F4 GT than any of the new iPhones.

Overall, the Poco F4 GT is solid, well-built, and premium, making it one of the affordable gaming flagships. If you don’t have small hands, then you will notice that the handling of this phone is similar to the handling of other phones today. In terms of size, it’s pretty average – not the biggest, but definitely not the smallest. It seems a bit heavy but we can call it comfortable to some extent. You will not feel tired after holding this phone for two hours.

Review of Xiaomi Poco F4 GT phone speakers

Poco F4 GT has four speakers, one is dual on the top and the other is dual on the bottom. Both are on the right side so that neither is muffled by your hands holding the phone when playing in landscape mode. It’s a very good decision on Poco’s part, and we like the setup a lot – not just for gaming, but it also works great when you’re watching videos in landscape mode.

As a result, we never had a problem hearing the speakers – it’s truly amazing what good positioning can really do. They’re honestly not the best speakers on the market, nor are they the loudest, but in the latter case, they’re pretty much the loudest, and that position just means they’re thoroughly enjoyable, whether for gaming, movies, or apps. Television and… of course even podcasts and similar things.

Again, don’t expect these features to be anything special, but then again, don’t expect them to be nothing special either, they’re great for everyday use and you won’t be disappointed – unless you’re constantly trying to use them in environments. Get pretty loud, but no phone speaker can really survive that.

It should be noted that the Poco F4 GT has the traditional Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco layout, whereby the handset and the top bezel are both outputs for an actual speaker. This means that if you’re talking with the Poco F4 GT in your ear, some of what you hear from the person on the other end will be transmitted through the upper speaker grille into your surroundings, which is inevitable. The result of the setup is obviously that if you use any kind of headphones, this will not cause any problems at all.

Vibration motor

The vibration motor  is one of the best out there, but unsurprisingly it’s the “feel it more than hear it” variety that seems to have won the 2020 vibration motor wars for whatever reason. What does this mean in practice? If you’re not touching the phone, if it’s not in active contact with your skin, you’re more likely to miss vibration notifications, even if it’s in the same room as you — and especially if it’s lying on the couch or carpet or similar. . The soft stuff on the tables is a little better, but even there, if you’re a few meters away, it’s game over. There just isn’t enough sound in it to call itself attention.

However, if you touch the phone, the engine provides excellent vibrations with a “3D” feeling with great depth. It is very versatile and enjoyable to use, but you need to set the vibration power to maximum. Otherwise, you won’t feel much at all. We’re all for customization and thus aren’t against this scale of power, but when only one end offers anything that remotely makes a sound, we have to wonder what the point is.

Otherwise, in use, it’s still interesting that there are little jolts here and there in the UI that use the vibration engine, but they seem to be fewer and fewer as the months go by, and this is a real fact. Shame because this was one of the big differentiating factors in MIUI’s favor in the real world.

biometric

Poco F4 GT’s fingerprint sensor is embedded in the power button and it’s great. It’s easily among the most accurate we’ve ever used, and it’s also very fast. Our first time unlock rate is limited to 100% and there are only a few misses here and there throughout our time with the phone. There’s really not much to say here – it’s a great fingerprint sensor and we had absolutely no problems with it.

I wish they were all as good as this one, especially the ones under the display. Honestly, if this sensor is any good, we’d take this side-mounted sensor over an on-screen sensor any day. If, like us, you are used to tapping it to unlock your phone, placing it inside the power button also helps a lot. By setting the unlock to press the button rather than just a touch (which in our experience leads to unwanted unlocks), it becomes a very seamless process, turning the screen on and off in one motion.

Of course, there’s also face unlock, and it’s fast and works well, but it only uses the front-facing camera, which means it’s less secure than fingerprint unlock. And you also need to wake up the phone to engage. If you do it by pressing the power button… there’s no time for face unlock to work its magic because the fingerprint scanner has already let you in. Face unlock does its job and very fast too. Let’s note that we checked and found that it only works when your eyes are open.

Xiaomi Poco F4 GT screen review

The Poco F4 GT has a decent screen that could easily be great for its price. It’s bright enough to be seen outdoors even on a sunny summer day, though it won’t break any brightness records. Similarly, it gets dark enough that it’s not awkward to use in a black-and-white environment, but we wish more non-native phone makers would use Google’s “Extra Dim” feature in their skins. For those who are sensitive to light, it will be a real boon to be able to dim the screen even further than it is at its lowest setting. Alas, MIUI still has no trace of that feature, I hope it changes in the future.

The automatic brightness curve is perfect in our subjective opinion. We only had to manually adjust it a couple of times where it got a little too bright indoors, but even then, most people were probably fine with what the phone had to offer. It’s always refreshing to use a phone with a good auto-brightness curve for an extended period of time, as one of the minor frustrations (the need to constantly adjust it) is simply not noticeable at all.

In terms of resolution, it’s certainly not a flagship phone. And yet, as we’ve mentioned many times before, most recently in our long-term review of the Xiaomi 12 Pro, we very, very doubt that most people will be able to tell the difference between such a “FHD+” and “QHD+” panel. One in real life, looking at the screen at normal usage intervals. And while you might feel that a gaming phone with a flagship chipset deserves a higher-resolution display, we’re sure that will add to the price tag. 

Screen quality and reading mode

Screen quality is excellent, with a native sRGB color mode, although you may struggle to achieve P3 accuracy, as the default Vivid color mode skews whites and grays significantly towards blue. Using a warm preset helps with this, but it also makes everything a bit too yellow.

The Poco F4 GT Reading mode blue light filter  is probably the yellowest blue light filter we’ve ever come across. We wouldn’t say this is a downside, but something to keep in mind if you use blue light filters a lot. Most of them will skew orange if you max out the intensity slider. This light is always yellow, and if you’re used to other colors, it might seem confusing at first: it’s very yellow. After a few days, we got used to it and most likely you will get used to it too.

The MIUI Blue Light Filter is still the most comprehensive filter on the market, with all the usual features like the aforementioned intensity slider, timing capabilities (including sunset to sunrise, as well as custom ranges), but it outshines everyone else with its paper texture mode. (with its own separate intensity slider) as well as the ability to display “bright colors” (read: somewhat desaturated) and black and white on the screen. It’s the complete package, it’s a nightmare of blue light, and it’s something we always wish other UIs would be inspired by, even though it hasn’t happened yet.

Xiaomi Poco F4 GT refresh rate

The Poco F4 GT display refreshes at 120 Hz. So far so good. However, the way the settings are implemented is very annoying – we’re glad we only had to adjust this once. There’s a default mode that does whatever it wants, and then there’s custom. Only after selecting it you can choose between 60Hz and 120Hz, and in our opinion 120Hz would be a better option. There is no point in buying a phone with a screen with a high refresh rate and not using it.

However, you should note that setting 120Hz here will not cause the panel to always update at 120Hz. This is basically a setting of the maximum allowed, but it is severely mislabeled. Even in this case, the phone goes lower when playing video, inside Google Maps and in the camera app. Games that support high frame rates get the full 120Hz, which is nice to see.

Let’s take a moment here and lament that Google Maps, an application that takes advantage of high refresh rates, is limited to 60Hz. Apart from that, as mentioned earlier, you will only notice the lack of refresh rate in the camera app. Otherwise, it always seems to use the highest refresh rate, which makes for a great user experience.

The display is always on

Unlike what we’ve seen on some Redmi models, the Always-on display can be set to actually be always on. There are other options too – to have it appear on a custom schedule or for ten seconds after a tap. While we’ve enjoyed always-on always-on displays for years, we’ve recently found that we really like the “ten seconds on tap” option since we use our phones so much during the day anyway. Obviously, you might enjoy other settings more. The point is that there are enough options for everyone here.

This continues when it comes to the always-on display look. You get a comprehensive list of analog and digital clocks, as well as different picture backgrounds and the “Kaleidoscope” option, which is always attractive and spectacular. Overall, MIUI’s AOD implementation is still among the most customizable out there, and that’s a good thing in our book – if you don’t want to mess with it too much, you can use the defaults, or you can really fine-tune it. to your preferences if you are so inclined.

The performance and smoothness of the phone

As a gaming phone, Poco F4 GT should perform amazingly. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? We’re happy to report that it does indeed live up to expectations, but only as far as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will allow. While it’s a true flagship chipset in every way, and will feel like it for any kind of casual use (including casual gaming), it has well-documented overheating issues, and the Poco F4 GT can’t completely escape them. run away It doesn’t matter how big the cooling system is.

Don’t get me wrong, the dual vapor chamber is huge, but put the phone through a throttling test and after a few (about ten) minutes, it drops down to about two-thirds without fail. So this is a typical feature of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. So, if you’re a professional gamer who needs all the performance at all times, we suggest choosing a device with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip inside – and that’s thermally improved.

For anyone who isn’t a heavy pro gamer, all of the above won’t matter, as the Poco F4 GT still feels very much like a premium device in use, no matter what you use it for. From throttling tests to long heavy gaming sessions.

With that in mind, let’s gently turn our attention to the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT, everyone’s favorite subjective “metric” that isn’t easily obtained from the specs tab. The Poco F4 GT is one of the smoothest phones we’ve ever used for a long-term review. In fact, it is tied for second place with the Xiaomi 12 Pro. The OnePlus 10 Pro still has a very slight edge, but the Poco is nothing to scoff at. The software is smoother than other smartphones on the market, which is why we’ve enjoyed using it on a daily basis.

Checking the battery life and charging of Poco F4 GT phone

The Poco F4 GT showed admirable longevity throughout the time we got to know it for this long-term review. Battery life has been excellent with our use case described below. We never ran out of battery at the end of the day, and always managed at least 6 hours of screen-on time. On some good days, we’ve seen over 7 hours, and while that’s not at the top of the charts, it’s pretty close.

The best battery life we’ve seen so far with similar long-term review use is over 7 hours of screen-on time every day, and over 8 hours in some cases. The Poco isn’t quite there, but it’s close, and it’s been incredibly consistent every day – we haven’t seen any weird ups and downs. That’s certainly commendable, but far more exciting than battery life is charging time.

Even though we’re starting to see 100W+ wired charging systems in various smartphones, there’s still no telling how much peace of mind these systems can give you — and in the case of the Poco F4 GT, it’s peace of mind. Highest battery life ever.

Typical usage of the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT includes about 12 to 16 hours off the charger each day, with a Wi-Fi 6 connection, about an hour or more of 5G mobile data, always-on location, and half an hour to an hour of GPS navigation. Via Waze, bluetooth always on and about an hour or two of listening to music or podcasts through the TWS headphones each day, as well as about an hour of phone calls.

With this kind of usage, we never needed to charge midday, but even if your use case is much more demanding (for example, a mobile data connection where the signal isn’t great), all you need is the charger and cable that comes with you in the box. has it. Zero to full takes an insane 17 minutes if you hit the boost button after plugging in, and about 20-21 minutes if you don’t.

It’s so fast that it’s impossible not to be around an outlet for at least a long time at some point during the day, so “range anxiety,” if we may borrow a term from the EV space, should definitely not be a thing at all. With this phone if only everything was the same for cars…but we digress.

There’s no wireless charging because you’d have to cut some corners to get to this price point, but with wired charging this fast, you can’t say we’re missing out.

Xiaomi Poco F4 GT software review

Poco is part of the Xiaomi family. As such, unfortunately, all of our usual software tips for Xiaomi and Redmi phones apply here as well. We are primarily talking about the update track. Our Poco F4 GT European review unit is currently running MIUI 13.0.7 based on Android 12 with the August 2022 security patch.

We don’t blame Poco for not rolling out the Android 13 update earlier—few companies that aren’t Google haven’t. Also, as usual, we should note that MIUI is such a heavy shell that most of the user interface changes that Google introduces in each new version of Android don’t even make significant changes. Everything is nice and stylish. But a security patch level that is more than three months out of date? This is simply unacceptable.

Xiaomi, Poco and Redmi simply need to improve in this area. We understand that issuing monthly security updates to all devices is a lot of work. But at least for the flagships, this should be done, and let’s not forget that the F4 GT is currently Poco’s top phone. 

As for that Android 13 update – it will probably happen. In 2023, most likely. Should it be less to get the latest version of the main operating system for the current flagship device of this brand? Certainly. Will Xiaomi, Redmi, and Poco care enough about this to invest the necessary resources to make major updates faster? Well, you know what they say. But based on how things have been so far, it’s unlikely. That investment has to come from somewhere, and consistently having the cheapest phones compared to the competition isn’t a recipe for huge profit margins, is it?

So here’s the bottom line – you’ll pay less for the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT than a similarly specced Samsung, sometimes significantly less, and less in the way of software updates. Exhibition? It’s your personal call to make, but we wanted to make the situation as clear as possible.

MIUI 13

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s turn our attention to MIUI 13. This is… MIUI 13. It looks like MIUI 12.5, which was similar to MIUI 12 before it. We’ve been saying this for a while now – MIUI needs a new coat of paint right now. It’s been years of incremental improvements now, which we appreciate, but it’s getting a little old.

Of course, we say this as phone reviewers who have already seen MIUI 13 on a dozen or so devices. If you have no experience with it, you will definitely not get bored with it. But even on a more objective level, the design language has been the same for a while – maybe it’s time for a rethink? Even Apple did this when it introduced Dynamic Island this year.

Functionally, it has all the bits and pieces you’d expect in a modern Android skin. There are parts of MIUI that are incredibly customizable – like the reading mode blue light filter and the always-on display, which we’ve talked about before, for example. There are a lot of built-in features, and as a result, some of them can be hard to find for the average user who spends hours in the settings figuring out where they are.

Xiaomi Poco F4 GT launcher

 The launcher is traditional Poco fare, with a bunch of options, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming to navigate through the settings. We’ve always thought it struck a good balance between not being simplistic (looking at you, Google) and not being overly confusing (something many third-party options can be guilty of).

Of course, as you’d expect in 2022, there’s an app drawer, and it even comes with some fairly neat options, some of which we really enjoy (app suggestions above), and others that never quite hit the mark. we have not seen (app handles) – but it’s possible, and if you do, they’re there. We like that there’s an option for the AZ navigation bar, as in our experience this is usually the fastest way to get to any particular app in the drawer, much faster than searching or scrolling manually, though keep in mind that this is for Those who like us have more than 200 apps installed.

A word of caution if  you’re copying your data from another device – the setting to put new apps on the home screen seems to have random default behavior in the latest versions of MIUI. Sometimes it is off by default, as it should be. Other times, it’s on – and if you don’t check, hundreds of apps may be automatically added to your home screen after the data copying process is complete. If you like your device to be as close to iPhone in terms of user experience as possible, you will enjoy it. Otherwise, you should take a look at the launcher settings as soon as possible when you boot your phone for the first time.

Fortunately, this build of MIUI has an option to display your recent apps in a horizontal scrolling list, although it’s not enabled by default. MIUI still insists on a two-column menu with vertical scrolling by default, and if you like that – great. Otherwise, like us, you’ll immediately switch to another way of doing things because it’s definitely a more familiar one, considering how every other shell out there implements a similar mechanism.

New control center, dark mode, RGB LED

Like all recent versions of MIUI, this version also includes the “new” Control Center, a very obvious rip-off of the iOS feature of the same name. Despite the lack of originality in its design, this works very well, but while we initially tried it on for good measure, we ended up going back to the “old” way of doing things. It makes more sense to us to have both notifications accessible, and Quick Settings toggles on the same screen – not to mention that because Quick Settings occupies the top of that screen, notifications are actually easier to access without complicated finger movements. 

Swiping down from the left for notifications also doesn’t make sense to us because we’re right-handed, but if we were left-handed, we’d probably have the exact opposite view. As it is, between notifications and controls, we have to reach for the first mode a lot more during the day, and swiping down from the left side is more uncomfortable if you’re holding the phone in your right hand with your right thumb. Of course, you may disagree, which is why you can follow the new system if you prefer it.

Naturally, there’s also a dark mode, and here it’s a simple on/off affair, with no fancy “darkness levels” options like ColorOS and its derivatives. However, it works well, it can be scheduled (either with a custom interval or from sunset to sunrise), and in theory, it can even be forced into apps that don’t have one of their own. However, in practice there is only one app you can do this for.

That‘s great because that app is really in dire need of a dark theme, but in the past, features like this worked with every app — for whatever reason, not anymore, and the selection always looks great. limited We don’t know what’s going on here, but we can assure you that Amazon wasn’t the only app we installed that didn’t have its own dark theme.

Since this is a gaming phone, it can’t do without RGB LED action, and there are actually two LED strips inside the camera island that can be set to light up when charging, as well as for incoming calls. 

The LEDs can be used on a custom schedule, and they also work with Game Turbo if you want to – although if you’re playing, you won’t actually see them, so that’s on the agenda. contract. In our opinion, to let the people around you know that you have a gaming phone. By the way, Game Turbo is also where you do your custom mapping for popup triggers.

Gesture navigation

Gesture navigation is as you’d expect on the Poco F4 GT and works great, as it always does in MIUI. If you don’t enjoy looking at that eyesore too much, you can optionally remove the pointless white “pill” bar at the bottom.

There are other gestures, and we’ll get to those in a bit, but first let’s understand how the gesture shortcuts menu in Settings includes gestures and button presses in a rather confusing way.

That aside, this is one of those menus that we imagine most people will never access, but there are some neat things inside. You can set Google Assistant to long press the power button, set the camera to launch with a double press of the power button or the volume down button, or both, and make the LED flash shine like a torch . Press the power button,  then there’s an option to double- or triple-tap the back of the phone for specific things — like taking a screenshot, accessing Control Center or the notification shade, opening the calculator app, going to silent mode, etc. A list of similar items can also be set up by double-tapping the fingerprint sensor.

These are all undeniable features – but once you know they’re there, they might come in handy in your day-to-day life, which is why we wanted to shed some light on this menu and its contents. You can even set some popup triggers by double-tapping as well as long-pressing. Although this is a more limited list you can choose from here – you can launch the camera, record video, record the screen, record audio, turn on the flashlight, go to silent mode and change the vibration give

Why are the options here more limited compared to what you can choose from for the back tap or fingerprint sensor? who knows. Why these features in particular? Again, they’re obviously a small subset of what the phone can do, and we can’t say we fully understand how to choose them, but we think having these options is better than not. And since none of these are on by default, it’s not like they’re going to get in the way of easily using the box or anything.

Back to the triggers, you can assign them one of four sound effects that go off every time you open them and a color animation, just in case you need to play up the fact that you have a gaming phone. room without uttering a single word

Bugs

Unfortunately, our time with the Poco F4 GT wasn’t without its glitches, as we ran into a few issues. Unfortunately this is becoming a recurring issue with Xiaomi / Redmi / Poco stable devices, and we hope the companies are planning to improve software quality control in the near future – it’s definitely needed.

Especially since the updates are so infrequent – ​​it usually takes months for a new one to appear, which means at least that’s how long you’ll have to live with whatever new bug one introduces. This is another reason why more updates are recommended, but so far, these three brands have gone their own way.

Before we begin, let’s just add the usual caveat – depending on how you use your phone, you may or may not care about one or more of these bugs. We list all the issues we found to give you an accurate idea of ​​what life is like with this phone. If you don’t care about any of them, great! But if one or more are important to you, you might want to wait for future updates to fix them before getting this phone.

The biggest bug for us was the Do Not Disturb (DND) mode, which simply didn’t work as it should. This is what happened to us during our time with the Xiaomi 12 Pro, which we also recently reviewed long-term, so this appears to be a fairly common issue with the latest MIUI 13 builds. We summarize the problem: DND mode should silence all notifications and allow only the “interruptions” you set. We did our usual setup, scheduled DND for when we’re asleep and only let calls through – and yet we still heard every single notification. Not much else to say about it – it simply doesn’t work.

Next, the sound quality via Bluetooth. There are some serious issues with the Dolby Atmos implementation on this phone, and unfortunately we can’t tell you exactly what they are. But what we can say is that we’ve never had to deal with Dolby Atmos settings before on any phone that supports Atmos. It’s generally on by default, and we left it that way, never touched the defaults, and everything was great.

We initially went the same route on the Poco F4 GT, but music sounded terrible through an array of speakers, headphones, and Bluetooth headphones. It was, for lack of a better word, much smaller than any phone we’re used to. And also much quieter. Note that we did not change any settings on the speakers or headphones before starting to use this phone.

The Xiaomi Poco F4 GT’s music listening experience was marred by any glitches that produced this thin sound that lacked any kind of depth. So, we started fiddling with the Atmos settings (for the first time, on any phone), and eventually found that the Voice was the best preset for our ears, along with a custom EQ that had all the levels on top. . The latter helped with volume, but even with these settings, the quality still wasn’t quite what we’re used to. It’s a strange feeling to get used to music playing a certain way on certain speakers and headphones, regardless of which phone it’s being used with, and then you get a device that changes that significantly, for the worse. Your mileage may obviously vary.

While roaming, we had issues with the Wi-Fi Calling Quick Settings randomly showing up first (left), even after repeatedly manually moving it to another location. We assume this happens every time the phone connects to a different network (which often happens when roaming), but it’s completely unnecessary behavior and therefore, in our opinion, qualifies as a bug.

The pop-up app selector that appears when trying to open a specific file type seems broken, as tapping the More option doesn’t actually give you the app list as it should. Instead, it randomly selects a program for you and immediately opens said file in that program. This was maddening at first because the app we wanted was never on the home screen, but it seemed to fix itself over time without any software updates. So with that in mind, you may or may not ever encounter it.

Finally, a small tip: if you enter Mute/Silence mode, an icon will appear in the status bar to let you know it’s engaged. Everything is fine, but the icon is on the wrong side of the status bar. It’s right next to the clock on the left, where the notification icons would normally be – and this can make it feel like you’re constantly waiting for a notification, even when there isn’t. We’re not sure why other system-related icons can fit on the right side of the status bar, but this one can’t — and the same goes for the NFC icon when it’s on. There’s enough room for both on the right side, no need to get confused about placing them.

Xiaomi Poco F4 GT camera review

Gaming phones usually don’t excel in the camera department because resources are spent elsewhere – RGB LEDs, crazy cooling systems, “gaming looks”, that sort of thing. Or maybe gamers don’t care about the camera? At least this seems to be the thinking of smartphone manufacturers. We can’t confirm that, but we wanted to mention all of this so you have reasonable expectations going into this part of our review.

Let’s be clear: the Poco F4 GT’s cameras will never compete with existing flagships in terms of raw image quality. There’s no way you can get it for this price and still get all the bells and whistles of the game.

With that said, let’s quickly point out that the camera app is the MIUI fare found on seemingly every Xiaomi, Redmi, and Poco device, so if you’ve ever used it, you’ll feel right at home. And even if you’ve only used other brands, camera apps these days are so similar that you’ll have no problem adjusting within minutes.

image quality

Now, on to our samples. The Poco F4 GT’s main camera is a 64-megapixel unit, which isn’t the biggest camera out there, and it doesn’t have optical image stabilization (OIS). The latter means that very long exposures at night require very steady hands or end up with blurry photos. The software knows this, so selfies with automatic night mode are very fast. Even the handheld night mode shots are some of the fastest we’ve ever seen.

But let’s start with daily examples. The primary snapper here is capable of outputting decent images that aren’t amazing but are still quite commendable. The level of detail is good, noise is kept to a minimum (although it can occasionally creep in), the dynamic range is very average, and there’s a good amount of contrast.

Colors on the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT can be oversaturated, more so than flagship devices usually do – this has been a recurring theme, where the lower the price of a phone, the more intense the color display. After all, most people like pops of color, so even though these colors are by no means natural, they might be pleasing to your eyes. We think they’re a bit high, but if they’re not high enough for you, turn on the AI ​​switch. You will either be impressed or disgusted by the results, but one thing is for sure – it will definitely elicit a strong response.

The 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera looks like an unremarkable proposition without autofocus – so no macro shooting of it. However, there’s a dedicated 2MP macro camera, which we haven’t used yet because its output is too low-res to be usable in most scenarios. If you simply must have some, check out the samples included in our regular review of the Poco F4 GT.

Anyway, back to ultrawide mode. Its daily shots are quite average, as the hardware shows. The level of detail is decent, the dynamic range is acceptable most of the time, and the colors are acceptable, but sometimes they can veer too much towards magenta.

Press the 2x zoom button  in the viewfinder, and you’ll get images that look acceptable on a phone screen, but nothing more. Sure, they might be used for a quick social media share here and there where quality isn’t too important, but otherwise, this camera system definitely invites you to “zoom with your feet” whenever you can. . That’s not surprising as there’s no dedicated zoom lens on the Poco F4 GT, and no fancy ‘Super Res Zoom’ here either – it’s just a crop from the center of the main sensor.

At night, Auto mode on the main camera with Bright Night Auto mode produces nice-looking photos with good dynamic range, similar daytime colors, good detail in well-lit areas, and low noise. On the other hand, shadows are too dark and lack detail.

Enter the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT’s manual Night Mode, and with a good boost in shadows, you’ll get much sharper images that look sharper as a result. The differences between Night Auto and Night Mode are steady, so we recommend switching to Night Mode whenever you have the time (provided you have the steady hands you need to shoot). On the other hand, Auto Night Mode is a definite plus for Auto Mode, so we’ll turn it on for when you’re in a rush.

The ultra-wide camera is predictably bad at night. Auto night mode doesn’t work for it, so it doesn’t overexpose while severely under-exposing highlights. You will only find these useful if you like the “atmospheric” look or whatever you want to call it.

The manual night mode helps, as it turns everything on, but at the cost of overall smoothness. We recommend avoiding ultra-wide mode in low-light situations, but if you insist on using it, night mode is the way to go – provided you have steady hands, as each shot takes a few seconds.

The 2x night shots also lack automatic night mode functionality, resulting in shots with blown-out highlights and very dark shadows, which is far from ideal. If you look closely, you will also hardly miss a “watercolor effect”.

This, unfortunately, does not go away when using night mode, but at least it restores the highlights to some extent and enhances the shadows somewhat. Unfortunately, it oversharpens everything, so it’s all a trade-off. We recommend avoiding 2x mode and simply “zoom with your feet” if needed and it can be done. Otherwise, it’s impossible to tell which 2x mode is better, as each has its own unique drawbacks.

Selfies are good, if not outstanding. During the day, you get excellent dynamic range, pleasing (if not quite natural) colors and accurate skin tones. The level of detail is good but not great. If you zoom in, you’ll see a lot of smoothness and a lot of sharpening liberally applied. But if you don’t pixelpip, these are mostly pretty usable.

Portrait mode photos deliver with good subject detection, although separation sometimes fails here and there. At night, the screen flash is your friend, as it’s not as bright as many others we’ve used so far. This means that while your face may not be as bright as other phones, you can still make out your surroundings in photos because the face brightness doesn’t wash out everything around it. Taking selfies with screen flash is an exercise in patience (and holding still), however, and if you move even a little, it’s bound to get some blur.

Overall the Poco F4 GT cameras are average. As expected based on the specs, the top end is the flagship, but it’s far from even flagship performance. That doesn’t mean it produces bad images – it doesn’t. They are good, but could be better. So if cameras are important to you, this is definitely not the phone for you, but for a casual shot here and there every now and then, it does the job well enough.

Summary

The Poco F4 GT is the first gaming phone we’ve reviewed in a long time, and we didn’t know what to expect. Is it difficult to use for non-gaming stuff? Does it skimp on other features to give you gaming essentials like RGB LEDs and pop-up triggers and a large cooling compartment inside?

As it turns out, yes, but only to an extent. Pop-up clips may not bother you at all, or you may constantly feel like they clutter up the right side of the device unnecessarily. This can be especially true if you’re not a “pro gamer”, and therefore don’t really have much real-world use for them. But if you play the game a lot, they add up, and you probably won’t mind them being there and moving the volume rocker to the left.

In terms of other features to give you a complete gaming package, the cameras are pretty average, and this is one area where this has happened. 

The Poco F4 GT came with the top chipset at the time and even paired it with a large vapor chamber for cooling. This, unfortunately, wasn’t enough to completely alleviate the documented overheating problems of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, and it’s still a lot of pressure in intensive games, starting after only a few minutes.

So the weird part about having the first gaming phone for a long-term review is that, if you think about it, it kind of fails in a great gaming phone because of all the pressure. Not bad – don’t get me wrong, but if you’re all about the pro gamer life, you should probably go for a phone with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 or get an instant cooling attachment. Otherwise, if you’re looking for a high-performance device for anything other than intensive hour-long pro gaming sessions, the Poco F4 GT will suit you well.

The software has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, MIUI has a very unique design language and flourishes here and there in the animations and vibration shakes it uses extensively. On the other hand, the categorization of features in Settings seems almost random at times, and the Settings menu itself is huge and hard to navigate. We also think the leather might be overdue for a new coat of paint, but you might disagree.

Similarly, we feel that software support – when it comes to updates – is sorely lacking. Every few months an update doesn’t match some of Poco’s competitors, and things get worse because the updates are far from bug-free. So if you encounter a new bug, you are stuck with it for months.

Speaking of which, there are a few MIUI bugs that we encountered on the Poco F4 GT. So we hope that Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco will invest more in software quality control in the very near future, while realizing that the current price may be unsustainable in the long term. After all, it’s all a trading game.

Battery life on the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT has been excellent – ​​not the best we’ve seen, but not far off. And even if your use case is much more compact than ours and you need a quick charge during the day, it won’t be a problem thanks to Super Fast Charging. It’s still amazing to this day to see a device go from scratch to full in less than 20 minutes! The fingerprint scanner is one of the most accurate we’ve ever used, the vibration motor is among the best, and the speaker performance is helped a lot by their gaming-friendly position (which we bet has a lot of media consumption, too. Friendly, too). .

The screen is pretty good, but not among the best out there – understandable at this price. The resolution similarly isn’t as good as the flagships, but we really don’t think anyone will notice the difference in real life without looking for it. While the Poco F4 GT looks like a gaming phone on closer inspection, it won’t really stand out from a distance if you have it in a different color that isn’t yellow – and that might be something you’ll appreciate.

The bottom line is that the Xiaomi Poco F4 GT is a very good phone, just not one that excels at its unique selling point. We recommend looking at this phone as a very affordable phone with a flagship chipset, and consider the gaming features as the odd bonus on the side. You should also be able to enjoy the absolutely amazing camera system. That being said, mid-range cameras are pretty much par for the “flagship killer” or “affordable flagship” space, and the Poco F4 GT would probably be best described as a flagship killer with a gaming twist.

If you want to feel different, but not so different that you feel uncomfortable, that’s great. It delivers very well in some areas (battery life, screen quality, handling, speakers), in others (smoothness, charging speed, vibration motor, fingerprint sensor) and still not so much in others. Camera image quality, stable performance). It’s definitely an oddball package, but some people are oddballs with oddball needs, and if you match what the Poco F4 GT can offer, you’ll have a great time.

Source: GSMARENA.COM