If you are a smartphone enthusiast you would know how good the POCO F1 was. It was a massive hit and it brought POCO a shine on its brand identity. Everyone set their expectation toward the company what they will bring next. This year finally after a lot wait, they released POCO X2. Wait! Is it F2 or X2? Yes, you are correct, it is not the version two of F1. It is a different series that aims to compete with Realme’s X2 as the name suggests. This beautiful new smartphone is not on open sale yet like other Mi budget phones. It is exclusively released on Flipkart.com with its first sale on 11th Feb at 12 PM. But, is this the phone we’ve been hyped for? Or its just a backup piece made by POCO to fill the market gap?
POCO X2 Specification
POCO X2 comes with a capable gaming/graphics oriented Qualcom SDM730G chipset. The exact series that powered the mid-range phone bearing similar specifications known as REDMI K30. It even looks surprisingly the same.
Just look at them
Guess which one is which? I had a hard time distinguishing myself. Unless you look at the logo part. Both POCO X2 and REDMI K30 is 165.3 x 76.6 x 8.8 mm (6.51 x 3.02 x 0.35 in) in dimension, both weighs 280g and both have 64 MP Sony Senor, f/1.9, 26mm (wide), 1/1.7″, 0.8µm, PDAF
8 MP, f/2.2, 13mm (ultra-wide), 1/4.0″, 1.12µm, 2 MP, f/2.4, 1/5.0″, 1.75µm (dedicated macro camera), 2 MP, f/2.4, 1/5.0″, 1.75µm, depth sensor.
It comes with an IR blaster that was missing in the Poco F1. It also comes with a 27-watt fast charger out of the box and has a bigger 4500mAh battery size vs 4000mAh in realme X2.
Is POCO X2 a re-brand of Redmi K30?
Yes. It is. You got the same specs, same looks, same exact classification and target customers. Ironically POCO X2 back camera part has a print that says “Designed by POCO”. I mean yeah, POCO is a sub-brand of Xiaomi, but did not it spin off POCO as an independent brand? POCO launched just 2 phones and the latest one is just a clone of REDMI K30. That is ironic.
Everyone is talking about the 120hz screen in the Poco X2. But most people probably will go for a 60hz AMOLED display. Because of the color accuracy, the perfect black color and of-course higher brightness. Even budget phones are having AMOLED displays nowadays, like Samsung’s A series or Realme’s X2. POCO X2 is equipped with LCD screen with much lower brightness then even Mi9T or Realme X2. So, technically 120hz not gonna give you that much good experience compared to above mentioned smartphones.
So, what is the point of buying POCO X2? You can just grab a k30 Pro 5G if you want. It has some improvements and 5G support, way faster charging and much more.
The reason behind POCO X2?
The real reason POCO bringing its X2 and not making an improved version of F1 is probably Realme. Realme is also a brand focused on making budget smartphones with killer specs. Realme X2 is their current budget release for gamers. They both targets a tough part of the market.
POCO is probably fighting against Realme’s strong presence with this release. You know the smartphone world. Whenever a new smartphone get released, people starts talking about that. Marketing rises, people get to know it, review it and dozens of videos get shared on Youtube. POCO is definitely going for that as Realme released X2 in December 2019 and POCO launched f1 one and a half years ago!
There was a gap. And POCO is trying to fill it in. Since making a viable improvement of their greatest release is much harder and will take a bit more time, its much easy to just re-brand an existing model from its ex-parent (but still parent) company.
Realme X2 or POCO X2 – The real deal
POCO X2 is not something special, then why people would choose it to buy it over Oppo’s Realme’s X2? Well regardless of what POCO X2 is or not, people will still buy POCO X2. Thats because of its lower price, hardware, service and not forgetting good availability in Asian and European markets.
People love new phone. Also POCO X2 fixed some issues REDMI K30 had. Also, K30 was a bit hard to reach phone which was not available in many countries. POCO X2 on the other hand, is targeting Asia and Europe too. Also Realme X2 kinda feels cheap when compared to POCO X2. Realme is just plastic. If you know what I mean? There is a bit of premium attached to the device.
And the main reason people would buy POCO X2 is its price. Currently it has been priced 200 EUR which is better value than Realme X2 and Redmi k30. In India it starts at 15999 for 6GB RAM base variant vs realme X2’s 4GB variant. With some bank offers the effective pricing is much lower.
It is a fair deal. Not bad! Let us hope for best. After all, we the users are the beneficiary of competition between these two giants from land of dragon.
