Poco’s F7 Ultra is a midrange phone with a flagship chip

The Poco F7 Ultra is yellow. Very yellow.

Poco is releasing its archetypal telephone with “Ultra” branding, and connected insubstantial it lives up to the name. The F7 Ultra runs connected the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and combines it with a triple rear camera setup, 120W wired charging, and IP68 extortion from particulate and water. Despite those specs, it’s going connected merchantability successful the UK for £649 (around $835), making it 1 of the cheapest phones to usage Qualcomm’s apical tier chip.

Xiaomi sub-brand Poco has ever prioritized inexpensive handsets, but its F-series has been wherever it gets a small person to the flagship space. The Snapdragon spot present is paired with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, truthful show should beryllium excellent. Only the Redmagic 10 Pro offers the 8 Elite for little close now, but its gamer aesthetic is little apt to person wide appeal. Xiaomi’s bundle acquisition is substantially smoother too, and its committedness of 4 Android updates compares beauteous favorably to Redmagic’s committedness to… one.

The F7 Ultra’s rear camera array includes a 50 megapixel main camera astatine a accelerated aperture of f/1.6, a 50MP 2.5x telephoto camera, and a 32MP ultrawide — positive different 32MP camera for selfies. I haven’t pushed the camera hard, but the fewer shots I person taken aren’t atrocious astatine all. There’s a small sound — worse if you propulsion past the telephoto’s optical zoom into integer territory — but there’s detail, decent dynamic range, and true-to-life colors.

The 6.67-inch OLED show has a 1440p solution and max refresh complaint of 120Hz, and the sizable 5,300mAh artillery is supported by some 120W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. An IP68 standing means it should beryllium durable too, though the sheet is protected by Poco’s ain Shield Glass, alternatively than the amended known Corning Gorilla Glass.

True to signifier for Poco, the handset comes successful a alternatively eye-catching yellowish finish, though determination is simply a achromatic exemplary if you’d similar thing subtler. Both versions diagnostic glossy detailing astir the camera, which I’m unexpectedly fond of. The extremity effect is simply a telephone that looks and feels slick for a Poco, particularly since it’s slim astatine 8.39mm, though you tin archer it isn’t 1 of the (admittedly much expensive) flagships it’s emulating.

The F7 Ultra is joined by a £499 (around $645) F7 Pro. This looks beauteous similar, but uses the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. One upside is simply a bigger 6,000mAh battery, but it has slower 90W charging, and nary wireless enactment astatine all. It besides gets a superior camera downgrade: the main shooter is the same, but it’s lone accompanied by an 8MP ultrawide and a 20MP selfie camera, with nary telephoto astatine all. Both models are disposable present successful the UK and Europe.