An unbeatable flagship performance at a great price is a sweet deal!!
The POCO F series has always been the performance-centric choice for gamers, ever since the POCO F1 launched in 2018 with the 2018 flagship chipset. It became a huge success, so the brand followed the same philosophy, and like each year, this year we have the POCO F7, which seems to be the flagship killer in the premium mid-range segment.The POCO F6 (Review) was a solid offering as it provided flagship-grade performance along with great gaming capabilities. Now, this year with the POCO F7, the brand is aiming for the same level of success, offering a few upgrades over the POCO F6: the newer Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, a larger 7550mAh battery, and much more, all at the same price.
So can the POCO F7 continue the journey as the flagship killer just like its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6? Is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.
POCO F7 Design:
The POCO F7 comes with a slightly different design when compared to its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. There are three different colour options present - Black, White, and Cyber Silver. The Cyber Silver variant comes with a dual-tone finish, with the first half in black and the second half in silver. The camera module is vertically oval shaped that houses two cameras with accent rings around the cameras.
Both of them are separated by a diagonal piece with two green LED lines running on either side of it look eye-catching and unique. This camera module is similar for all colour variants. With the Cyber Silver variant, just beside the camera module, there are different geometric shapes which include triangles and rhomboids with different textures, colours and finishes. There is also the Snapdragon branding, which looks interesting.
Just outside the camera module, there is a dual LED flashlight. The other two colours - Black and White look plainer with no gaming aesthetic. However, the back of all colour variants does catch quite a bit of fingerprints and smudges, so it is better to use the smartphone with a case on the back. The POCO F7 has all the required IP ratings, which include IP66, IP68, and IP69 ratings, which include both dust and water resistance.
Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame that houses the power button along with volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. On top, there is only a secondary noise-cancelling microphone with no secondary speaker, which means the earpiece acts as the secondary speaker, which is located on top of the camera.
At the bottom, there is a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, a USB Type-C slot and a dual SIM card slot. There is no additional slot for microSD card storage expansion. The POCO F7 weighs around 215 grams, which makes it slightly heavier than its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6, which is due to the premium glass build of the POCO F7 over the polycarbonate back of the POCO F6.
Around the edges, the smartphone is more rounded, which makes it easier to hold in the hands. The front glass is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which is a slight downgrade over the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus built on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. Overall, the build and design feel premium and are a good upgrade over the POCO F6.
POCO F7 Display:
The POCO F7 sports a larger 6.83-inch 1.5K (1280x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9, and this time the display size is also slightly larger when compared to its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. This is a 12-bit display with good colour reproduction, with deeper blues and blacks, along with great viewing angles.
There is support for a 120Hz refresh rate, which is similar to all typical POCO devices, i.e. it is an adaptive one, not an LTPO panel. There are two different settings to choose from - Default and Custom. The Default Mode lets you choose between 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rate, depending on the content in the display, and this mode works for applications to run at 120Hz and even force to 60Hz for better battery life.
The Custom mode, on the other hand, lets the display scale between different refresh rates - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz, depending on the content in the display. Combined with the 120Hz display, you get a 480Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses, and this touch sampling rate increases to an instantaneous 2560Hz during gaming while using the Game Turbo mode.
In terms of display brightness, the POCO F7 reaches a peak brightness of 3200 nits, a slight improvement over its predecessor, the POCO F6 (2400 nits), as measured in an HDR video playback test. The typical brightness hovers around 800 nits, which is good, and under direct sunlight or with the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display easily reaches around 1200nits of brightness.
There are three different colour modes to choose from - Original Colour Pro, Vivid, and Custom. If you set the Original Colour Pro mode, the colours look natural and cover the sRGB colour space, whereas if you choose Vivid and Custom modes, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut. You can set the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone accordingly.
The POCO F7 has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which works fast and is very accurate. The display has support for HDR10, so you can easily stream HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 lets you stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, etc. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.
POCO F7 Performance:
The POCO F7 sports a flagship-grade Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, which is a minor upgrade over the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset has an octa-core setup, which includes 1x3.21 GHz Cortex-X4 with 3x3.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 cores with 2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores, which is based on a 4nm process.
Coupled with this chipset, there is an Adreno 825 GPU, which does the duty and is clocked at 1150MHz. In terms of day-to-day activities like scrolling through webpages, playing games, and taking photos and videos with the camera, everything feels smooth in use. All heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings without breaking a sweat.
With BGMI, we could easily achieve Super Smooth graphics and Extreme frame rates, and after 3-4 hours of gameplay, there were no stutters, and the gameplay remained consistent at 120 fps. Even in other games like Call of Duty Mobile or Genshin Impact, the gameplay was stable at 90fps with very minor frame drops noticed. However, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer, which remains a slight concern.
POCO has equipped the smartphone with a 6000mm2 larger vapour cooling system, which dissipates heat faster. There is the Game Turbo mode, which provides consistent frame rates during gaming and shows the CPU and GPU usage during gaming. It does miss out on bypass charging, which may not be a problem for many out there. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily achieve a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent, which is very good.
There is some minor throttling noticed, but it is negligible. The benchmark scores came out the best in class. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation, and almost all bands of 5G are supported. The POCO F7 is available in two different variants: 12GB RAM with 256 GB storage and another one with 512GB storage, where RAM speeds are of LPDDR5X and storage speeds are of UFS 4.1 speeds.
POCO F7 Software:
The POCO F7 runs on HyperOS v2 based on Android 15 out of the box. The user interface is almost similar to HyperOS, which was initially present on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6, but this time around, there are a few changes and newer AI features. The user interface comes with two separate panels, which show the quick settings and another one is the notification panel, both of which cannot be merged.
The homescreen supports a huge list of applications, widgets and larger folders which can accommodate different applications. You can either use the app drawer or place all applications on the homescreen. The animations are now smoother and work extremely well on the display. There are a whole lot of customisations where you can change icon shape, size, and colour and also tweak the lockscreen with different wallpapers and effects.
There are a lot of themes for the Always-On Display, which can be set on the lock screen. Talking about the AI features, there are a host of them. In the gallery, under AI Photos, there are a host of AI features which include AI Enhance, AI Beautify, AI Expand, AI Sky, AI Erase, and AI Remove Reflection, all of which come in handy as you can remove objects and people from photos, reflections and also change the appearance of the sky in images.
Google Gemini is present at the heart, which lets you do multiple things and also creates images depending on the content you have asked for. Along with that, there is the AI Speech Recognition, which lets you transcribe speech into text, summarise the contents and translate them. This works well on the Notes app. AI Writing, AI Dynamic Wallpaper, AI Smart Cutout, etc., are some of the handy features.
There is the Circle To Search, which works extremely well throughout the user interface. However, the biggest disappointment has to be the presence of a lot of third-party applications in the user interface, which feels slightly cumbersome to use. However, these can be uninstalled easily. In terms of software updates, the POCO F7 will receive another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is a good improvement in terms of software longevity over the POCO F6.
POCO F7 Cameras:
The POCO F7 sports a dual camera setup, which includes a primary 50MP f/1.5 Sony IMX822 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. There is no macro camera here, which is good, as most manufacturers add it as an extra, which does not make much of a difference since the primary camera itself is capable of taking macro shots. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.2 camera for selfies.
In terms of daylight images, the details look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look punchier with no oversharpening present. The contrast is slightly on the higher side, and the white balance is handled quite well. All these results are captured in 12MP by default. With the dedicated 50MP mode, you get slightly softer details, decent dynamic range and slightly more noise.
At night, the images come out with a decent level of detail, which looks a tad softer, and the dynamic range comes out to be average. The noise is present clearly in the background, and there is some amount of oversharpening also. With the dedicated Night Mode turned on, the details look a bit sharper, but still the camera suffers from some oversharpening. However, the colours look punchier as it oversaturates a lot in the background.
The primary camera is also capable of taking 2x zoomed images, which come out with sharper details and good dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening. At night, the 2x zoomed images come out with slightly softer details, and the dynamic range is not as wide. The noise is also on the higher side with oversharpening in the background.
The ultrawide camera clicks images with sharper details and has decent dynamic range, but the noise is on the higher side. There is a lot of distortion around the edges, and similarly, at night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with a decent level of detail, and the dynamic range is not so wide, with more noise in the background. The details in the shadows look crushed, with a lot of improvement to be desired.
The selfies come out with sharper details, with good dynamic range, and noise is also well controlled in the background. There is slight oversharpening present in the selfies, which could have been improved. At night, the selfies come out with decent dynamic range with softer details. The human skin tones look artificial at times. In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of edge detection and has a wider dynamic range.
The level of background blur is well maintained, along with almost no noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The primary camera can record 4K videos at 60 fps, whereas the ultrawide and the selfie camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps only. The 4K videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range.
The colours look slightly oversaturated in the background, with less noise. When you switch to 1080p video mode, you get better stabilisation with sharper details and almost no noise in the background. The videos from the ultrawide camera have decent detail that looks a tad softer, and the background noise is considerably higher.
The colours look saturated in the videos taken using the ultrawide camera, though. At night, the ultrawide camera struggles in terms of details, with average dynamic range and more noise in the background. The videos from the selfie camera come out with slightly softer details, with a lot of oversharpening in the background. The dynamic range is average, and the contrast could have been better.
POCO F7 Battery Life:
The POCO F7 sports a larger 7550mAh battery, which is massive in size when compared to the 5000mAh battery on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. With the newer Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset built on an efficient 4nm process, we do expect better battery life. With normal usage that includes playing games for 1-2 hours, scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with some charge left.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., for 4-5 hours or more, continuously using the camera for videos or images, editing videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days. The standard screen-on time with normal usage came around 8-8.5 hours, which is just outstanding, and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 4-5 hours, which is also very good.
In terms of charging, the POCO F7 is bundled with a 90W fast charger, which is bundled inside the box. This is a slight step down from the 120W fast charger that was provided with the POCO F6. The 90W fast charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent in around 1hour 30minutes, which is quite time-consuming considering the massive battery that the smartphone has. There is also support for 22.5W reverse charging, which means the POCO F7 acts like a power bank, also.
POCO F7 Audio Quality:
The POCO F7 sports a single speaker at the bottom, but the earpiece on top of the selfie camera acts as a stereo speaker and provides good audio quality. The sound does not feel distorted or muffled in the background, and the loudness is also very good. There is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output.
Verdict:
Overall, the POCO F7 is a solid contender in the premium mid-range segment as it brings a premium build and design, a larger display along with a set of stereo speakers, which is great for multi-media consumption, a flagship-grade chipset for performance and gaming, solid battery life, a good software experience and a decent set of cameras.
When it comes to gaming, the POCO F7 fits here perfectly well as it provides consistent frame rates during gameplay and adding to it the gamer-centric design makes it look stunning. However, there are a few areas where this smartphone could have been better. HyperOS 2 in itself provides a feature-rich experience with all the AI features, but the amount of bloatware just makes the experience slightly cumbersome.
On top of that, POCO is not so fast in terms of delivering timely software updates, but still, the brand has improved quite a bit in this area. The cameras are just average when you compare them with today's competition, where many manufacturers are providing newer camera sensors in the premium mid-range smartphones. The primary camera performance is good, but the ultrawide camera struggles in terms of low-light photography and videos.
When compared to the POCO F6, the POCO F7 does bring in necessary upgrades, which include the design, display, battery life and performance, but adding to that, the price has also been increased. So, as an overall package, if you are not concerned about the camera experience and software, with focus only being towards gaming and solid battery life, then the POCO F7 is the true one to be considered above others.
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