Gadgetory

more and more smartphones are becoming long-term investments with the ticket prices being close to or even exceeding the thousand dollar mark so when Xiaomi launched its paka phone brand and subsequently the Baka phone f1 nine months ago it's safe to say that the Chinese giant shook up the market but how does 2018 s budget beast hold up in 2019 well in our second episode of Redux we're going to find out Xiaomi is well known for its great software support and the pocket phone f1 is no exception the device has already had an OS upgrade from 8.1 Oreo to a 9.0 PI and if the company's track record is anything to go by this phone should at least get Android Q in q4 of 2019 Jay Manny the head of product for the pocket phone brand replied to a tweet on the 28th of October 2018 saying that the f1 will at least get P and Q so we'll have to hold the brand to that when it comes to the next big Android update general software updates seem to come every two weeks and some of those have had a fantastic effect on pocket phone's camera which we'll get to later a particularly crucial update to those film fanatics of U was released in February where the phone finally got Widevine l1 certification allowing for Netflix and Amazon Prime video playback at HD resolutions before this only 480p was offered so I'm glad that we got an issue resolved the specs of the f1 easily compete in 2019 as we have a year old flagship SOC and plenty of RAM in both the 6 and 8 gigabyte configurations as a gaming phone the device performs well and is still smooth and speedy with minimal hangs so needless to say that general performance is just as good camera performance has improved significantly since the launch of the POC of f1 not only giving us 9 60 FPS slo-mo but also in a beta 4k 60 image quality sharpness dynamic range and color accuracy of all dramatically improved thanks to the far better image processing portray mode is probably the main weakness even after all of those awesome improvements the omission of white and zoom lenses on this device makes it feel kind of outdated or even seeing these extra focal lengths on low to mid-range units so missing them here is kind of a big deal the display is the weakest factor of the pocke phone in my opinion it's backlight bleeding and shadowing issues can't be resolved via a software update however the sharpness and colors look pretty even by 2019 standards the porcupine f1 does miss out on a few crucial features that we see in 2019 smartphones such as the Indus play fingerprint scanner water droplet knotch hole punch or even glass back with wireless charging but I feel like those emissions are more than made up for the fact that you get such a good speck in a phone of that price battery life is still great partly due to the reasonably large four thousand milliamp ourseleves here but also due to shammies aggressive tasking something that hasn't changed since launch whether the lassi is good or bad will depend on your personal preference but a full day of usage is more than achievable for pretty much everyone brand new you can get a pack of nf1 for $300 300 euros or 250 pounds on sites like eBay and if you're willing to go use you're going to save even more money there this puts it in the mid-range sector of the market inhabited by the Galaxy a 50 the LG q7 plus and the Moto g7 all devices that shadow in the raw horsepower of the pocke phone f1 we believe the f1 to be a fantastic value even in today's market and considering its slightly lower price than at launch and with those added benefits from the software updates we feel like it's possibly a better value than it was when it was first released the f1 takes so many boxes in the spec department but just in case the pocket for an f1 isn't your cup of tea here are a couple of alternatives that we recommend for around 100 USD more the newly released pixel 3a looks to be a great option for you shutter box a refurbished LG G 7th in queue is also a great option due to its similar spec config and massive feature set including weather resistance the POC phone f1 is a fantastic phone in 2019 and so it misses out on a few things you know the design isn't quite as nice as a lot of people would like it hasn't got a glass back it doesn't feel very premium especially compared to some of its mid-range contemporaries but I feel like its form over function mantra with still competitive specs and superb value mean that it's definitely worth the buy in 2019 we're excited to see what the paco phone f2 will bring and we'd like to hear your thoughts about that in the comments below and with that it's time for me to go thank you all so much for watching please do like comment and subscribe if you're new around here to never miss a video like this one and check all the links in the video description one is from Ryan Thomas with Android authority and I'll see you later peace