POCO F4 GT, first impressions: the most powerful, ambitious… and expensive POCO to date

LITTLE has put on the table his most ambitious mobile to date. The POCO F4 GT is the European version of the Xiaomi Redmi K50 Gaming Edition, so we are facing the first purely mobile gaming of little. A display of power, physical triggers and technologies aimed at the user spending a few hours playing.

We have already been able to test this POCO F4 GT, so we are going to tell you what our first impressions with this phone. We anticipate that the F4 GT is not technically a successor to the POCO F3, but a mobile gaming that comes to compete with firms such as Nubia or BlackShark.

Technical sheet of the POCO F4 GT

A most daring design

The POCO F4 GT, in its rear part, moves away from the design line that we have been seeing in the catalog of the Xiaomi sub-brand. Mobile hugs premium mobile materials, with glass on the back and aluminum on the sides. There are quite a few stridencies in the design, which you may like more or less. For the moment, we are left with the good impression that the materials have given us, worthy of a more expensive mobile.

Hidden triggers.

Active triggers.

There are very neat details along its edges. We have some triggers that emerge manually through two small tabs. The feeling when pressing them is pleasant, and POCO promises a lifespan of more than one and a half million keystrokes. The power button is quite largeacting as a fingerprint reader (quite fast, by the way).

on the opposite side we have a single button to manage the volume, also quite large, Note that the button is metallic (there are many aluminum mobiles with plastic buttons) and that the keystroke is exquisite. But what surprised me the most, by far, is the location of the speakers on this device.

The speakers are located in such a way that we cannot cover them when we play.

It may seem like a minor detail, but POCO has placed the speakers on the right side of the frames. With this it is achieved that, when we are playing, it is impossible to cover them. This is especially important in a mobile oriented to horizontal use, and even more so when taking the fingers to the triggers makes it even more difficult for us to cover these speakers.

On the front it does not shine so much, and the bezels are somewhat generous. The front camera hole is not as small as the POCO F3 and overall gives the feeling of being somewhat rough ahead. In general, it is a large and heavy mobile, but it has a comfortable grip, good materials, and it makes a lot of sense to play for hours.

A great panel to play anywhere

The POCO F4 GT debuts a 6.67-inch panel, with AMOLED technology and a non-adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. It is compatible with HDR10 +, although not with Dolby Vision. It is a panel with enough brightness, behaving especially well outdoors. The work with automatic brightness is outstanding, one of the best we’ve seen.

However, It is a panel slightly removed from the highest range mobiles, by colorimetry and general balance. We have to be demanding users to notice it, and practically no user will have any complaints about the quality of the panel. It is the best that POCO has ridden to date, and it shows.

We especially appreciate that there are no curves of any kind, something especially annoying if we want to play and hold the phone without problems. The viewing angles are good, without accusing the rainbow effect as its brother the F3 did and the color calibration is perhaps a bit garish, although we can correct this through software.

In short, a panel for gamers in which the adaptive 120Hz is missing (important for energy savings) and, making us demanding, a 2K resolution in the face of the long years of life that await a terminal with these specifications.

The best of Qualcomm and 120W charging

At the hardware level, this POCO F4 GT does not lack anything. Our unit has 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal memory (UFS 3.1 and LPDDR5), in addition to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. On paper, the hardware configuration is spectacular, although it remains to be seen in the review to what extent. affects the throttling that we saw in models such as the Xiaomi 12 and 12 Pro. We already anticipate that he suffersbut in the analysis we will delve into performance.

As a small pill to anticipate that, in use as a “normal” phone (apps, navigation, some quick games), the experience has been more than worthy, with that extra fluidity provided by the POCO launcher compared to other Xiaomi mobiles.

What we have noticed is some rapid warming, although it remains quite stable in temperature thanks to its liquid cooling system. Some additional ventilation accessory, as some of its direct rivals have, would have been more than interesting, and perhaps it would help the performance not to drop during long hours of play.

To power the set, Xiaomi has mounted a 4,700mAh battery with 120W ultra-fast charging. As we saw in the Xiaomi 12 Pro, It is disabled by default and, every time we activate it, the security app tells us that this charging system could heat up our device. On autonomy data we will deepen the analysis, although our experience these days anticipates that it is a greedy mobileand it is that the combination of panel operating at 120 Hz higher temperature does not help to contain consumption.

The device arrives with Android 12 and MIUI 13 for POCO. This ROM is very similar to what we find in the rest of Xiaomi devices, but the launcher is more minimalist and close to Android Stock, excellent news for those who value a clean experience with the software. Game Turbo, Xiaomi’s app to optimize games, makes more sense than ever, since will allow us to map the triggers to taste.

These triggers (right and left) emulate a virtual touch on the screen. Imagine you are playing ‘Call Of Duty: New State’. You can map the right trigger to the virtual fire button, and the left trigger to the virtual aim button. Physically pressing the trigger will perform the virtual pressso you save yourself from touching the screen and gain quite a competitive advantage in games.

LITTLE photographic ambition, a classic in mobile gaming

The camera oversaturation is excessive, and the sharpness is closer to the mid range than the high range.

When a mobile puts the focus on gaming, the camera usually goes into the background. This POCO F4 GT mounts a not too large 64-megapixel sensor, accompanied by an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle and a 2-megapixel macro sensor. We already anticipate that photography will not be the star point in this POCO F4 GTbeing closer to a mid-range than a high-end mobile.

A few photos have been enough to know the weak points of this camera. HDR seems to have some problems to control the highlights, the general detail is given by the software and the general processing becomes artificial. The camera will be enough if we do not have photographic ambitions, but little else.

In the analysis we will delve into this section, but taking into account the price of the device we already anticipate that it will not be one of the best photographic exponents in its range. It is a mobile gaming and it is understood that the focus is the game, but for more than 600 euros a solid photographic section is expected.

A LITTLE by and for gamers

The F4 GT is a LITTLE different. It is a mobile designed for a very specific audience, and a clear rival of phones like the Nubia RedMagic 7, which has a fairly similar base price and practically identical specifications. For now, the sensations are goodwith power to spare, a superlative finish and a fast charging system inherited from the Xiaomi 12 Pro.

In its in-depth analysis we will detail how the photographic section behaves, we will delve into the throttling that accuses the high-end of Xiaomi and we will give a verdict about the position that POCO now occupies in the segment gaming. The ambition is presentwanting to make it clear that it is the most complete POCO to date.