Poco F5

The  F5 and   F5 Pro are nearly identical in size and basic features, but when we take a closer look at the specs, we begin to see how they differ in some narrow ways. However, both phones are aimed at a budget-conscious audience, with the F5 Pro being the affordable flagship. However, the subject of this review is the vanilla Poco F5, and it is essential to note that the F5 has a different name in some markets – the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Turbo. The latter was released in March, so you can use this review as a reference if you’ve decided to buy the Redmi Note 12 Turbo, as we doubt we’ll get a review unit for it anytime soon. The phone offers some significant upgrades compared to its predecessor while maintaining its price  (the F4 launched at 400 euros). It’s a great choice if you’re looking for a powerful mid-range device with some advanced features on the side. The standard F5 is powered by the all-new Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 chipset, which hopefully isn’t just a rebadged Snapdragon 778G. The phone also has the familiar 6.67-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and a higher maximum brightness than its more expensive sibling but with a lower resolution. The camera setup of both devices is identical and the battery capacity is around 5000mAh which supports super-fast 67W fast charging. The only difference is that the F5 Pro adds wireless charging to its list of features. It seems that no matter which device you decide to get, the user experience will not change much. However, if wireless charging and a more futuristic SoC like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 are high on your priority list, the extra dollars for the F5 Pro might be worth it. However, we think the F5 will get you 90% of where you want to be, so it’s probably the better.

Oneplus 11R

The OnePlus 11R is the latest in the company’s lineup of streamlined flagships for the Indian market. These devices try to capture the essence of a flagship device but make some sacrifices for a lower price. The OnePlus 11R may look similar to the more expensive OnePlus 11, but internally it’s almost identical to the recently launched Realme GT3, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. It is also identical to the OnePlus Ace 2, which is the same phone for China. So what do we gain, and more importantly, what do we lose compared to the more expensive OnePlus 11? Many things, but not as much as you realize. The screen is still curved, but the resolution is slightly lower, about 35 pixels less. The chipset is last year’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 instead of this year’s. The main camera is the same, but the ultra-wide angle is different and the telephoto has been replaced by a 2-megapixel macro.

Design of Poco F5

Xiaomi went for something more memorable with this year’s Poco F5. Or at least that’s what we see with the white colour option. The glowing pattern on the back rotates like a hologram in the right corner and turns ice blue towards the bottom of the device. It looks nice. But if that’s too hard for you, the other two colours are more formal, so there’s something for everyone. Weighing only 181 grams, the F5 offers a significantly lighter body than its predecessor, albeit a slightly thicker  7.9mm. Xiaomi opted for individual camera rings instead of an entire camera island. It looks fresh and different. It’s almost completely flat except for the slightly rounded edges that meet the back and front panels. The left side is completely clean, so on the right you’ll find the volume rocker and the power button, which doubles as a fingerprint reader. Of course, the panel is protected by Gorilla Glass 5. In general, we liked the design – it’s simple, ergonomic, unobtrusive and light. There’s nothing bad to say about it. And for the asking price, the IP53  dust and splash certification is a great bonus.

Design of Oneplus 11R

The design of the OnePlus 11R is quite similar to the OnePlus 11, to the point where they look identical in certain lighting. This has not been the case in the past, as neither the 9R nor the 10R looked like this year’s flagships. The front of the 11R has a curved screen. OnePlus doesn’t advertise the glass on the front [update: it’s Dragontrail], but it was scratch-free in our testing. The front-facing camera is centred on the top of the 11R compared to the side of the 11, which is one way to differentiate the two phones. The frame around the device is made of plastic with a glossy surface. On the right side of the phone are the power button and the alarm slider, the latter of which was missing from the previous 10R. Intrusion protection aside, the OnePlus 11R looks and feels great in the hand. The curved sides, relatively lightweight and excellent texture of the back panel give it an extremely premium feel even though the frame is made of plastic. The fact that it can look like its much more expensive sibling may be a bonus for some. Unlike the OnePlus 11’s IP64 rating, the 11R has no advertised rating. The phone has built-in intrusion protection, as you can see from the rubber seal around the SIM tray, we don’t recommend relying on them too much.

Software and Performance of Poco F5

Poco F5 runs on the latest MIUI 14 based on Android 13. Technically, the overlay is called “MUI 14 for Poco”, but in reality, there is not much difference between the regular MIUI 14 and it. The only immediate difference is in the default icon style. It seems to work better with round Android icons.  MIUI for Poco also allows you to lock the screen by double-tapping an empty spot on the home screen, while regular MIUI does not. It also lacks the “large icons” feature,  for what it’s worth. We are still not sure how Xiaomi will decide which features will reach the global MIUI ROM, which will remain exclusive to the Chinese version and which Poco will eventually get. It’s all confusing. MIUi 14 is said to be built almost from scratch, engineers have redesigned the core architecture of  MIUI ROM to the basic level of Android. This includes new CPU, GPU and memory timing, smaller firmware size and reduced memory usage. As a result, Xiaomi claims a 60% smoother experience and significantly optimized processes. The menu also has automatic compression for applications that are not actively used. Unfortunately, these are features that we can reliably test and confirm that they have been implemented on the Xiaomi 13 Lite. They can only be used on phones with Android 13.

The Poco F5 is powered by an all-new Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 chipset based on TSMC’s advanced 4nm N4 manufacturing process. As usual, the SoC uses an octa-core processor, but with completely different core clusters compared to the older chipsets of the Snapdragon 700 series. It also differs from the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, which we consider a simple rebrand of the Snapdragon 778G. The good news is that the new SD 7 Gen 2 is a completely different chip. The main high-performance core is  Cortex-X2 2.91GHz, coupled with 3 x Cortex-A710 cores 2.49GHz and energy-efficient Cortex-A510 cores 1.8GHz. The Adreno 725 running at a clock frequency of 580 MHz can handle graphically demanding tasks.  The device has two memory versions – 8GB/256GB and 12GB/256GB. That’s pretty generous in our books, and the default 256GB  storage reduces the need for a microSD card. This is indeed a mid-range phone. Although the Poco F5 has advanced vapour chamber passive cooling, which Xiaomi calls LiquidCool Technology 2.0, the continuous performance is quite low. See the table below for inconsistent performance even within the first 10 minutes of the test, with performance falling below 80% of theoretical. Ideally, this graph should level off even when maintained efficiency is below 80%. We are happy to see such impressive performance from the new Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 chipset. As you can see, there is no chipset in the same price range that can match its performance. The Poco F5 easily beats the competition, ceding the top spot to last year’s Poco F4 GT, which has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. And only in the single-core Geekbench 5 scenario. However, the difference is negligible and it is surprising to see that the SD7 Gen 2 outperforms the SD8 Gen 1.

Software and Performance of Oneplus 11R

The OnePlus 11R runs  OxygenOS 13.0, which is built on top of Android 13. Our phone was running version A.08 and the January 2023  patch at the time of writing, and OnePlus has promised three major Android updates and four years of patches for this device. The history of OxygenOS 13 is now known. Promised to be a “lighter experience” closer to  Android, it instead turned out to be ColorOS 13 with a moustache and fake glasses. Even that is giving it too much credit, as the two are almost identical now. So anyone holding their breath for a return to the glory days of OnePlus software is likely to be disappointed. Compared to older versions of OxygenOS, ColorOS 13 may be like chalky cheese, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s pretty well designed, has a lot of built-in features without going overboard, and offers a variety of customization options. Eventually, with patience, you’ll look and function more or less the way you want, which is about as good as going without a full custom ROM. Unfortunately,  the software lacks polish and attention to detail. Despite being absorbed into a much larger company, OnePlus’ software still comes out of the gate feeling like it was built by two guys in a room on a tight deadline with no one to beta test. As a general rule, games are still mostly locked to 60Hz. If a game like New State Mobile supports 90Hz, the phone will instead go into a 120Hz refresh rate when the game renders at 90Hz. Touchscreen gestures also work very poorly. OnePlus’ navigation gestures often don’t work as well as other Android phones, but the OnePlus 11R had a hard time detecting swipe gestures at all unless you went to the edge of the screen. This became frustrating after a while and forced us to revert to button-based navigation.

The OnePlus 11R is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is last year’s flagship. It is paired with up to 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and even a monstrous 16GB of LPDDR5X. Our review unit was the best configuration. Last year’s flagship comment was not intended to be meaningless, as the 8 Gen 1 has more than enough power to be a top designer for many years. The OnePlus 11R performs very well with lightning-fast response and smooth animations, at least when the screen is running at 120Hz. While you don’t necessarily need the full 16GB, there’s no 12GB option, meaning you’ll end up with 8GB if you don’t want to go for the higher version. While this is by no means a bad thing, it’s no longer enough if you’re a heavy multitasker and not particularly forward-thinking. We strongly recommend getting the 16GB variant, especially since it also comes with a larger 256GB storage and costs just INR 5,000 more. Gaming was also excellent on the OnePlus 11R. The GPU on this chip is a strong performer, and thanks to the in-game stats provided by OnePlus’ video games, we can see that the bottleneck is often the CPU rather than the GPU,  even when running games like Genshin Impact at full blast. . 60fps is not even close to  GPU limits. Being able to go beyond 60Hz would have been nice, at least for games that support it, but now it’s up to OnePlus to decide which game can do it, and even then they can only go up to 90Hz. The phone maintains a comfortable temperature even while gaming. While none of the games we tried pushed the hardware to the limit, the Surface never got hot. However, when used outside in the sun, the phone gets quite hot and aggressively lowers the screen brightness to combat it.

Camera of Poco F5

The Poco F5 uses the same camera hardware as its predecessor. The main camera has a 64-megapixel OmniVision OV64B40 sensor with a size of 1/2.0″  and 0.7 µm pixels. The sensor is combined with an f/1.8 aperture and an optical stabilizer. We think this sensor is a bit dated, especially for this price range. We have seen larger sensors in the same price range. The ultra-wide camera is still 8MP and uses a Sony IMX355 sensor, which is quite small at 1/4.0″, 1.12µm and paired with an f/2.2 aperture. For macro shots, the phone is equipped with a standard 2MP f/ 2.4 shooter. The selfie camera has changed this time. The new setup uses Samsung’s S5K3P9SP04 16-megapixel camera with f/2.5 aperture. Last year’s F4 had a 20-megapixel unit.

The camera of Oneplus 11R

On the back of the OnePlus 11R, there is a triple camera system consisting of a 50-megapixel Sony IMX890 primary camera with an f1.8 lens and OIS, an 8-megapixel f2.2 fixed-focus ultra-wide camera and a 2- megapixel fixed-focus macro camera. On the front, there is a 16-megapixel fixed focus f2.4 single camera. This is one of the biggest differences between the OnePlus 11R and the more expensive OnePlus 11. While the 50MP main camera is identical on both phones (minus the Hasselblad branding, but more on that later), the other two cameras on the back are business basement issues. The camera software looks very similar to other OnePlus phones running OxygenOS 13.0, and the days of different OnePlus phones with different camera software are thankfully behind us. But while the software looks and works the same,  the features have been cut. However, the biggest shortcoming is on the photography side, where the Pro mode doesn’t allow you to shoot in RAW mode. This leaves the Pro mode somewhat pointless.

The battery of the Poco F5

The Poco F5 now has a larger 5,000 mAh battery with a 4,500 mAh cell and is expected to have a more powerful chipset compared to its predecessor. The Poco F5 was able to achieve a total battery life of 118 hours with excellent screen-on and standby times. However, the gaming durability is particularly impressive. To be honest, the F5 isn’t all that impressive when you put its results into context.  Ralme 10 Pro, vivo V27 and  Samsung Galaxy A34 have a longer battery life, although in some cases only slightly. The Poco F5 is powered by a 67W Xiaomi charger – the same as before. However, due to the larger battery capacity, the F5 charges slightly slower. It’s still not reckless, but like the first 15 minutes, the device went up to 48%. After another 15  minutes, the battery indicator showed 83% and it took only 47 minutes to fully charge. Compared to other brands,  Poco F5 is competitive. It is one of the fastest.

The battery of Oneplus 11R

The OnePlus 11R packs a 5,000mAh battery and supports 100W SUPERVOOC fast charging, just like the more expensive OnePlus 11. In our testing, the phone charged from 1% to 50% in 9 minutes and from 1% to 100% in 26 minutes. Although we didn’t do full battery testing, the OnePlus 11R has good battery life and should last most users all day.

Price of Poco F5

Poco F5 is a mid-range smartphone that was released in July 2023. It comes in two variants: 8GB RAM 256GB storage and 12GB RAM 256GB storage. The basic version is priced at Rs. 25,999 in India and £359 in the UK. The higher variant is priced at Rs. 27,999 in India and £449 in the UK.

Price of Oneplus 11R

The OnePlus 11R is available in two different memory configurations: 8GB RAM with 128GB storage and 16GB RAM with 256GB storage. The base model costs ₹39,999 in India and $480 in the US. The top model costs ₹44,999 in India and $550 in the US. The OnePlus 11R is a good value-for-money smartphone that offers a lot of features for its price. It has a powerful processor, a large and beautiful screen and a fast-charging battery. If you’re looking for a mid-range smartphone with great performance, the OnePlus 11R is a great choice.