Yes, it’s HERE! After almost a whole year of creating MANY videos on the POCO F3, the POCO F4 GT is finally here! So here is my unboxing and my first impressions of the phone, which I promise you, will be a very unique experience.
Unboxing
Starting from the unboxing, the POCO F4 GT comes in a yellow and black box, with the POCO F4 GT text on the left, the 5G logo and text on the top right, and POCO’s logo on the bottom right.
Then at the side towards the bottom of the box, there are the specs and the color variant you choose.
Opening the box, as usual, there is another smaller yellow box that contains the SIM ejector pin on the outside, the Quick Start Guide, Safety Information, and the Warranty Card on the inside.
Then there is a USB-C to headphones jack dongle (Nice!) and the clear phone case.
Underneath, you will find the phone itself.
Below that, there is a rather unique USB-A to a USB-C cable, where the Type-C is a side-angled one instead.
And the massive 120-Watts Smart HyperCharge adapter.
Build & Design
Next, looking at the design and the build of the phone, my first impressions when I took out the phone was like, whoa! What in the world??!
Firstly, this Knight Silver color had one of the most attractive and unique finishes I have seen this year, which is like a silver version of Thanos’ armor.
The rear has a combination of a frosted finish on the left and right if you are looking at the phone from a portrait angle, where it is divided with a mirror-like line in the middle and more similar lines on the left and right towards the middle of the phone, then there is another sort of layer of a frosted finish just next to them as well.
Something which I found very unique is the shape of the camera’s flashlight, which was very reminiscent of a flash symbol instead of a typical rounded flash.
And speaking of the cameras, it has a medium-sized camera bump, and it doesn’t wobble if you are typing on the phone when it’s placed on a surface but only when you press towards the middle part of the phone.
In terms of the other color options available, other than this Knight Silver Color, it also comes in Stealth Black and Cyber Yellow. The Cyber Yellow does look like a very prominent trademark of POCO’s color scheme.
Now the POCO F4 GT was not very light, neither it was too heavy, so I felt that it had just the right weight at about 210 grams, where it overall felt like a very solid device, especially since it is an all-matte finish for the sides hence it gripped very well in my hands.
And another very unique thing about the phone is the ports and buttons. Looking below, other than the USB-C port, there is one of the two uniquely shaped speaker grills, and another speaker grill is towards the top together with the IR Blaster.
On the left, there is a dual SIM card slot, so no MicroSD card expansion over here, then the volume rockers are also there, where it is placed towards the middle with a microphone placed over here as well, once again, very unique, yeah I will be mentioning “unique” a lot of times more in this video.
Now, if you thought that was unique, you will find even more buttons towards the right where other than the side fingerprint sensor and power button being placed in the middle of the phone, there are the Magnetic pop-up trigger buttons that you could not only use as a trigger when you are playing games but also to map it to other functions like launching the camera app, record video, screen or audio, turn on the torchlight and change between Silent mode and Vibrate mode or even do nothing.
And this can be mapped not only for both sides of the button but also as a double press and press and hold command.
And I have to say that I really love how there is a switch to pop it up and down, and it will stay flushed when you pop it inside, to eliminate any sort of distractions by having lots of buttons over on the right.
Then on the front, the flat-screen display has the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection, with the camera hole punch in the middle towards the top of the phone, of course.
So my overall take on the build quality is that I would totally give this an A+ rating because I humbly feel that not only does the phone feel extremely nice in the hands, but the overall look of the phone definitely screams premium as well! So excellent job POCO!
Display
As for the phone’s display, it has a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with a 2400 x 1080 FHD+ resolution and an aspect ratio of 20:9.
Since I’ve always said that not all AMOLED screens are created equal, I am happy to note that the screen on them was really excellent, as how the F series has always been.
Now compared to the previous F series that I have reviewed, I love how this POCO F4 GT not only has a refresh rate up to 120Hz, but it has a Dynamic Mode adjustment too, hence saving battery in the long run; however, there is also an option to choose to force it to go at 120Hz refresh rate or 60Hz as well.
It would have been nice if there was a 90Hz option too, but I guess I will be using the phone through its Dynamic Mode all the way anyways.
As expected, watching videos on the phone was excellent as it supports DCI P3 wide color gamut with HDR 10+, and it is a 10-bit TrueColor display.
Playback on Netflix was at Widevine L1 with Full HD playback and HDR support as well.
And the display does go plenty bright up to 800 nits of typical brightness, and the Auto Brightness function of the screen is always adjusted to the right dimming value, which is also a huge plus as some phones tend to still make the phone either too bright or too dim when the automatic brightness toggle is turned on, and this is thanks to the PWM dimming technology on the screen too.
Then finally, due to the 480Hz touch sampling rate, playing games on it was also a really great experience as well.
Cameras
Next, on to the phone’s cameras, 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/2.4 lens.
Ok, so I took some quick test shots on the phone, and my oh my, once again, the rear camera for the F series never disappoints, with amazing photos taken for the ultrawide, the main lenses, the 2x digital, and even the 10x digital zoom as well.
Portrait mode for subjects and humans was also amazing, and so were the macro shots.
And the selfie photos also had great portrait mode and regular selfie shots as well.
Video Recording
As for the video, the rear lenses can record up to 4k 60 frames per second, but only for the main lenses, as there is a limit of going up to 1080p 30 fps for the ultrawide lenses.
And as usual, even in the year 2022, the front video recording can only go up to 1080p 60 frames per second. Ah…POCO, I have totally given up and am fed up with this limitation.
But yes, I will be testing out the cameras further as usual during my full video review, so subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven’t done so.
Specs
As for the other specs, this POCO F4 GT ships with the flagship 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 5G Chipset.
In terms of the RAM and storage configuration, it comes with either 8GB of RAM with the additional 3GB of virtual memory, and what’s sweet is that it is using a full-fledged LPDDR5 RAM as well.
As for the storage, it comes with either 128GB or 256GB UFS 3.1 storage which was also really nice.
Software
As for the phone’s software, it is shipped with MIUI 13.0.2 for POCO on top of Android 12, so I am super glad that it wasn’t on Android 11 instead, like some of their recently released smartphones.
During my first impressions using the phone for a couple of days, the software was great 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 and the haptics on the phone was also great as well.
Since this phone is also very much catered for gamers, there is a LiquidCool Technology 3.0, which promises a huge upgrade on the thermal performance, so let’s see how well it does for games like PUBG Mobile and the usual hours of Genshin Impact gameplay, so stay tuned for my full review once again, especially with me integrating the magnetic pop-up button into my overall gameplay as well.
And speaking of gaming, 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.
Battery
In terms of battery, it has a 4700 mAh of battery, and one might question why it doesn’t come with a 5000 milliamps battery instead since it’s a more of a “gaming centric phone” but if you think about it, it will make the phone thicker, and I already felt the thickness of the phone was just the right size.
And keep in mind that this is a dual-cell battery, meaning there are technically two batteries inside which combine to the value of 4700 milliamps.
It also has support for up to a whopping 120W HyperCharge, where the charger comes inside of the box as seen earlier, and yes, this is the first for the POCO brand that can charge the phone from 0 to 100% in about 17 minutes and about 27 minutes while gaming and charging the phone at the same time due to the MTW or Multiple Tab Winding Technology.
Now there was some negativity surrounding how the phone will go “kaboom” because of the 120W charging; well, calm down, guys, because like the Xiaomi 12 series, this has a similar technology that optimizes the charging performance once it is within the higher percentage range of the battery to preserve the battery health and since it has a dual-cell battery it will divide the heat emission accordingly, making the phone less possible to have any overheating issues with the battery.
As of the recording of this video, there was no official price for the phone that has been announced yet here in Malaysia, so stay tuned for that, where I will either update in the pinned comment of my YouTube video on the pricing or let you guys know in my full video review.
So guys, with this, do let me know what you guys would like to know specifically about this new POCO F4 GT in the comment section of my YouTube video, and I will answer them when I do a full video review of the phone.
Thanks for reading!
**POCO F4 GT Price**
Malaysia – Early Bird Price (RRP)
8+256: RM1,999 (RRP: RM2,299)
12+256: RM2,199 (RRP: RM2,499)Get the POCO F4 GT at the link below:-
Shopee Links:
8+256 https://invol.co/claji6v (Shopee)
12+256 https://invol.co/claji78 (Shopee)Lazada links:
8+256 https://invol.co/claji87 (Shopee)
