Gadgetory

today's sponsor is Volta the last cable you'll ever need so I've been using the polka phone f1 yeah I told you you didn't believe me the SIM card is in you can see I even have a couple of bars there right now I have it on the table next to an s9 plus and I'm going to tell you why in a second year it's because many of you guys have been hitting me up on Twitter asking a very specific question about this poke foam and that question is specifically about how the polka phone deals with drm content that is digital rights management it's a terrible term nobody likes it but it's it's a reality of modern content and the Internet some of it is protected for obvious reasons and that content lives in places like Netflix Amazon Hulu BBC and other places that stuff is protected and because of that there's a whole protocol there's a whole hardware software scenario that's necessary for decrypting that encrypted content now news started to break about an issue on this particular device when it comes to decrypting that encrypted content that lives in places like Netflix like Amazon it's not that it can't do it at all but it can't do it in HD I thought I needed to make you aware since I've done a couple videos on it now and I know it generated a lot of interests a lot of you guys are asking me about it it turns out that it is true this unit is affected because of that let me give you a little more detail here so there's something called Widevine Widevine support and that's what's necessary to decode in full HD or even in some cases HDR content from sites like Netflix the poco f1 comes with Widevine DRM l3 but wide vying l1 is what's necessary to decode in full HD resolution from Netflix Amazon and so on instead on a device like the poco you are stuck at 540 P on Netflix now because of the number of tweets that I got regarding this particular topic I real it must be important to allow to you to be able to look at HD content and it kind of makes sense especially if this is your main display now this is not something that can be updated through software it's not it can't be addressed via software update it's not like eventually it's going to support HD resolution on Netflix unless to some sort of modification to the actual physical unit now this particular problem is not exclusive to the polka phone or Xiaomi devices in fact it happened previously to oneplus devices as well in the 5 and the 5 t now I don't know if this is something that was just overlooked or if it was a cost-saving thing I'm not a hundred percent certain but nonetheless at the moment if you purchased this phone you will not be watching Netflix in HD so the purpose of this video right here is to not only advise you and let you know about that flaw but to also test how big of a problem that is so I have a galaxy s 9 on the right hand side the polka phone f1 on the left hand side I'm going to launch Netflix on both of them these two pages look very similar while they are it's the same show but what you'll notice is on the s9 you see the HDR logo that's for this particular show if you pick another show that might not be available in HDR you'll just see the HD logo instead but regardless of which show you pick on this device over here you will never see an HD or HD R logo on the content this will be locked in to 540 P the question is is that enough pixels how big of a difference is that going to be and so on so let's load something up and take a look here top device s9 + that's running in HD and then the device below at 540 P the poco f1 now of course this is a difficult thing to evaluate you're looking at it through a camera lens then back on your phone that you happen to be watching this but I can attempt to do my own analysis the HD image looks better but surprisingly on a display this size the 540 P version of Netflix looks pretty good like totally manageable look if you're a super Netflix or Amazon video enthusiast probably gonna want the best resolution available that's understandable but if you're a casual viewer and you're already on a cellular network and watching your data consumption I don't know you might be better off just watching it in 540 P anyways it would be hard for me personally because generally you want the best capability you want the highest resolution available wherever possible that said YouTube completely fine Full HD actually I should show that off real quick YouTube does not utilize this type of DRM as you'll see on YouTube we can go up to 1080p this is an unboxing video and of course full res thank goodness I'm a little less worried I don't think this should be a deal-breaker it's not a massive enough difference stepping down to the 540 P that the polka phone f1 is capable of I think it's less of a big deal than then some of you out there might think it would have been not the deal breaker now of course this doesn't conclude my evaluation I told you I wanted to do an extended scenario like I have with so many other smartphones recently and I'm going to continue to do that with this one I can tell you that so far it's been very promising this is my main phone my SIM card is in here as promised I have a lot of thoughts on it but that's gonna continue to evolve a little bit more is shaping up with my my final evaluation and feelings regarding this device at this price point there you have it yes a flaw not as major as some people think in my opinion kind of sucks but we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet you