With OnePlus phones – most recently the OnePlus 8 – coming with increasingly high price tags to match their strong specs, the title of ‘flagship killer’ which they once held is arguably up for grabs, and the latest phone from Xiaomi looks a strong contender to take on the title.
The newly-announced Poco F2 Pro comes from Xiaomi's sub-brand Pocophone, which previously put out the popular Poco F1, and it's sporting some top-notch specs, but without a top-end price tag.
- These are the best Xiaomi phones
- Check out our Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro review
- These are the best cheap phones
The phone is available to buy in Europe already, priced at €499, which is roughly $540 / £440 / AU$830, for the base model with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, and €599 (around $630 / £530 / AU$1,000) for the 8GB and 256GB model.
That looks pretty affordable, but those converted prices might not be exact when the phone goes on sale in other regions, so we'll need to see the final pricing before labelling it a 'flagship killer' for sure.
According to Xiaomi the phone is coming to the UK later this year, and it'll possibly come to Australia at some point too as the company releases some of its phones there; however, it doesn't release its devices to the US, so we'd be surprised to see it appear there.
The F2 Pro could go toe-to-toe with the OnePlus Z, a mid-range smartphone that's rumored to be coming later this year, and which is expected to be OnePlus' pitch to reclaim its former reputation. Is there space in a crowded field for two such phones? Only time will tell.
Poco F2 Pro specs
The Poco F2 Pro has a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with a 1080 x 2400 resolution. No mention is made of a high refresh rate, so it seems the phone will have the standard 60Hz, rather than the 90Hz or 120Hz of the latest flagships.
The screen itself isn't broken up by a notch or cut-out – instead the 20MP selfie camera is housed in a pop-up module, a feature that a few brands have flirted with, but which has yet to really take off.
The phone has four rear cameras, with the main 64MP snapper joined by 13MP ultra-wide, 5MP 'telemacro' and 2MP depth-sensing cameras.
The chipset here is a Snapdragon 865, which is the top-end processor available to Android phones right now, and an indicator of Xiaomi's ambitions for its sub-brand. There's also 5G connectivity, and a 4,700mAh battery with 30W fast charging.
So the Poco F2 Pro certainly looks like it could potentially be a flagship killer – we'll bring you our verdict as soon as we're able to review the phone, so stay tuned.
