So I have been using the POCO F4 GT as my daily smartphone for about 3 weeks, and the question that I kept getting from you in my hands-on or first impressions video was:
#1 – Is this better than the POCO F3?
#2 – Is it worth upgrading if you already have the POCO F3?
#3 – Will there be a regular POCO F4, without the whole GT name and gaming triggers?
Well, let me give you those answers in this review.
Specs
Here is a recap of the specs of the phone, so feel free to pause this video to see the exact variant that I have.
Build & Design
Now, as usual, during my full review videos, I don’t go into all the technicality of the phone; instead, it will be based on just using the phone daily and from the build quality and design perspective.
Firstly, yes, as mentioned, I still love the smartphone’s rear finish; while it’s not minimal like the POCO F3 but I liked how it stood out from an aesthetic point of view because the Stealth Black variant did look like a typical gaming smartphone and the Cyber Yellow was so strikingly yellow that someone might notice it from a mile away.
So in my humble opinion, this Knight Silver color had the balance of having a unique look and just being different from a typical smartphone.
Based on my daily usage, the phone was at the right weight, felt very nice in the hands, and I even confidently used the phone without any case on because I did have confidence that the phone would not slip off from my hands due to the finish at the back of the phone.
Speaking of the back, there is a notification light when you get a message, during the Game Turbo Mode and it also acts as a battery charging status, but to be honest, since I only put the phone face when I am not using the phone, so I didn’t feel that it impacted my daily life in any way.
Then the whole Magnetic Pop triggers did come in handy for me daily, as I remapped one to turn the phone into Vibrate Mode with a double press, and pressing and holding it goes to Silent Mode when I am recording my YouTube videos or doing my Live hosting sessions for Shopee.
And the second button was used to record a video for my Instagram Stories quickly; when I double clicked it and pressing and holding it records audio for me to make some quick voice notes, especially when I was reviewing this phone, where I had just left the buttons to pop up all the way.
I have to be honest to say that I initially thought that these trigger buttons would be something that I probably won’t use daily. But, still, I am happy to know that I did find them pretty useful indeed, and I would say that I was pretty impressed by how the build was and the out-of-the-ordinary smartphone design when using this phone every single day.
Display
The F series smartphones from POCO always had a great display on their phones, and while it is not a huge difference, I love how the refresh rate is now adaptive; hence, it will adjust the screen refresh rate based on how you use the phone.
So in layman’s terms, if you are just using the phone to read something, it will save battery by lowering the refresh rate, and if you are scrolling fast content or just multitasking, it will increase the refresh rate accordingly.
While there is an option to select or “force” it to go to 120Hz or 60Hz all the way, I went with the Dynamic Mode all the way since it had the best of both worlds of being snappy when it needs to and saving battery at the same time.
I also loved how the screen brightness adapts to any type of environment very well that you are in, so the PWM dimming technology in the phone does work flawlessly, making the screen very visible and pleasing whether you are in a brightly lit area or harsh daylight or a very dimmed area as well.
And because the screen has Widevine L1 on Netflix with HDR support. Watching videos on Netflix, YouTube, and even Disney+ Hotstar during my cardio sessions in the gym was really lovely when consuming video content every day on this 6.67-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, thanks to its high color accurate screen.
Cameras
A quick recap of the camera specs, in case you have missed my previous video on this phone, the POCO F4 GT comes with:
- a 64-megapixel f/1.9 IMX686 sensor for the main camera
- an 8-megapixel f/2.2 ultrawide lens
- and a 2-megapixel f/2.4 macro lens.
Then the front camera has a 20-megapixel f/2.2 lens.
64-Megapixel Mode
Starting with the high 64-megapixel mode, image quality was really good with ultra sharp details, so you can crop accordingly as usual during this high-resolution mode, but because of the file size, be sure to use this mode sparingly.
Ultrawide Lens
Switching to the Ultrawide Lens, I love how the colors and the image quality were consistent throughout, with just the right focal length with absolutely no barrel distortion at the sides.
Main Lens
Then switching over to the main lens, image quality was amazing over here, and no color shifts were coming from the Ultrawide even when switching to the 2x zoom mode; it not only kept the sharpness, but the image looks very consistent as though it had a dedicated telephoto lens, so it was really nice to know, but of course, the 10x zoom images will be softer overall.
Portrait Mode
The portrait mode for humans was excellent, with fantastic subject to background blur; however, the skin tones seem like there was a little beauty mode, or probably my buddy Mo is too pretty in these shots, and it worked flawlessly as well for subjects too.
Macro
The Macro mode was probably the only thing that I felt could improve on because focusing wasn’t as easy, but you will get some decent results when you get the shot.
Night Mode Ultrawide
Then the ultrawide Night Mode shots kept everything very nicely balanced, where skies didn’t look like it was forced into a different color to brighten it up, the highlights were nice, and the shadows were not noisy at all.
Night Mode Main
Image quality for the main lenses on the Night was a tad brighter but again maintained very excellent quality even on the 2x zoom.
But if you decide to go up to 10x, please don’t because the images will look like this…
Night Mode Selfie
While there is a night mode for the selfie camera, I prefer how the image looks in the non-night mode during some decent night lights, but if there is very little light, there will be some amount of noise and a smudge in the image.
Night Mode Selfie Portrait
And the performance of the portrait mode was also really great over here as long as there is some light around the area where you took the shot.
Day Selfies
However, both the regular selfies and the portrait selfies during the day were simply amazing, with fantastic dynamic range and subject to background separation.
Day Video Recording
Quality
The video recording quality for the main lenses during the day was equally as good as the images, where it records up to 4k 60 frames per second.
Stabilization
Video stabilization for the main lens was really great, even moving through at a fast pace.
Ultrawide
Video stabilization for the ultrawide lenses was also great, but keep in mind that it only goes up to 1080p 30 frames per second.
Front Video
Now, although the front camera can only record up to 1080p 60 frames per second, it has very good image stabilization with a pretty good dynamic range as well.
Night Video Recording
Quality
Switching over to the nighttime video recording, the main lens did perform well in terms of the quality of the footage. Still, the stabilization isn’t at the greatest over here, and since the ultrawide lenses record at a lower resolution, expect a degradation of footage over here as well.
Front Video
Speaking of degrading footage, the front video is also not the best trait as you will need a lot of light; otherwise, you will end up with noisy footage and jittering stabilization.The good news is that compared to the recent POCO X4 Pro that I have recently reviewed, that phone had some overheating issues, where if the phone became hot while taking photos or videos, it would dim the screen to the point that you can’t see what’s on the screen, and that was not the case on this POCO F4 GT, and that was great to know!
Do check out my YouTube video for an audio-video recording test on the phone.
Software
As for the phone’s software, it is shipped with MIUI version 13.0.2 for POCO on top of Android 12.
And yes, I am so glad that it wasn’t on Android 11 instead, like some of their recently released smartphones, and from my first impressions and up until now of using the phone for two weeks, even though it’s not the best Android Skin out there, in my humble opinion of course, but it’s nice that the software is really stable with no issues, with a really super-fast response when scrolling and navigating through the phone and even when opening many apps at the same time, loading websites and the haptics on the phone was something I liked on the phone when I was using it daily.
While we all know how notorious the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Chip is when it comes to overheating, I am extremely pleased to report that because of the LiquidCool Technology on the phone, it handles the heat very well, but that’s not to say that it didn’t get hot at all, because the ONLY time it did become warm to the touch is when I was gaming, which is the obvious topic that we are going to talk about next.
Gaming
Now, I am going to go out of my way by saying this, if you LOVE gaming, this phone is a HUGE must!
Firstly, whether or not you are just a casual gamer or a hardcore gamer, I can honestly say that the magnetic trigger buttons were a really convenient feature from a casual game like Asphalt 9 to FPS games like PUBG Mobile.
And speaking of which, the settings of PUBG Mobile were at UltraHD graphics and frame rate at Ultra and gameplay was extremely smooth with beautiful and very sharp graphics.
There was no battery drain even after playing the game for about 30 minutes straight and the game trigger came in super handy as it felt very easy to use compared to other gaming smartphones like the Black Shark series that I have tried.
The idea of having a combination of jumping and shooting accurately is something that is not easily achieved without a game trigger due to the placement of these pop-up buttons and the high refresh rate also helped a lot with the overall responsiveness as well
Then going into the gameplay of Genshin Impact, I honestly had super low expectations because I still feel that if you want to get the best Genshin Impact experience, just get an iPhone or an iPad because of Apple’s Bionic Chipset BUT I was extremely amazed during the gameplay over here.
At Medium settings, 60 fps and Motion Blur turned ON, not OFF like I had to on every other Android smartphone, I just couldn’t believe my eyes because the animation was extremely smooth, graphics were amazing and gameplay had no stutter or lag issues, and while it did get warm about 45 minutes of gameplay but not too hot to the touch and the heat was dispersed evenly compared to concentrating the head specifically on the camera placement area like other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 smartphones.
The battery also went down to only about 3 percent during my first 30 minutes of gameplay and for the rest of the gaming sessions it went down significantly slow, which was a huge plus.
And yes, I did find the audio experience for the phone to be very nice due to its symmetrical quad speakers, and the phone also has Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res audio support, making the whole gaming experience on this phone the best Android smartphone that I have ever gamed Genshin Impact on.
Battery
As for the phone’s battery, it has a 4700 mAh of battery, and the battery drain was at a very great range where I was about 35% with close to 4.5 hours of screen time when I was using it to take lots of videos and pictures.
It does last the whole day, and sometimes before noon the next day, depending on how heavy of gaming you use the phone for.
And the 120W HyperCharge did come in clutch since I never charge my phone overnight, so usually, I would just charge it when I wake up, go about on my usual morning routine, and it’s all full to use the phone, which is very similar to the claimed charging speeds of 0 to 100% in about 17 minutes.
And while POCO claims you can also charge the phone while gaming to get up to 27 minutes for a full charge, I didn’t do it since, firstly, having the cable coming on at the sides wasn’t something I was a fan of, and secondly, I never came to a point where I was playing games until I had to charge my phone as well.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, coming at a price of RM2,299, the POCO F4 GT is indeed a very compelling hybrid flagship and a gaming phone, and during the period that I used the phone, I had no issues at all.
Whether or not will there be a regular POCO F4, without the GT name behind it, there have been rumors but knowing POCO as a brand, we might, or might not even get it because there still isn’t any official word if they are bringing it globally, and yes I am familiar with the K series being like the global F Series, but as I have always said before in this channel, no official news means no news for me.
So with this in-depth review, we finally have an answer to all of the questions mentioned at the beginning of this video, so is this better than the POCO F3?
Yes, it is because of its superior gaming performance, and the trigger buttons are something that you won’t think you need until you have them; the battery performance is slightly better because of the adaptive refresh rate, and of course, the charging speeds are a hell of an upgrade as well making it a slightly better phone than the POCO F3.
On to the question about if you have the POCO F3 and should you upgrade to the POCO F4 GT, well, if you really game a lot then yes you should, otherwise I would say no, because if you are not a hardcore gamer, you would not need those trigger buttons, even as convenient as it is, the screen quality is about the same although the refresh rate on the POCO F4 is adaptive and 120W charging is another super nice thing to have but not necessary to have. Heck look at the charging speeds of an iPhone man and I still use it daily without any issues. And finally thanks to the software updates, the POCO F3 still has very great cameras and probably very identical to the ones produced on the POCO F4 GT.
Get the POCO F4 GT at the link below:-
https://invol.co/clavpua (Lazada)
https://invol.co/clavpul (Shopee)
