POCO F7 | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh

As performance-focused smartphones crowd the mid-range segment, the POCO F7 arrives with a seemingly clear strategy: pack in capable hardware, push battery boundaries and undercut rivals on price. Backed by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip, a bright OLED display, and what appears to be the largest battery on any mainstream phone in India right now, the F7 is tuned for gamers and streamers alike. But does the impressive spec sheet translate into the real everyday experience? Let’s find out.

Design

The POCO F7 has an aluminium frame with a glass back. The rounded edges make it easy to hold, though the glass panel can feel a bit slippery and is prone to smudges.

I reviewed the black colour variant, which, like the white one, has two green accents on the camera module – a subtle, new design touch. There’s also a ‘Cyber Silver’ version with a black-silver mix and bolder, tech-inspired graphics with the snapdragon processor logo on the back.

Display

The POCO F7 has a 6.83-inch pOLED display with a peak brightness of 3200 nits and refresh rates of up to 120 Hz. The screen is excellent for streaming — I noticed plenty of visual detail in daytime action scenes while watching The Night Agent on Netflix. Skin tones look natural, and the overall colour profile leaned slightly towards cool tones, which isn’t really bothersome.

The stereo speakers deliver well-tuned sound, with good balance between bass and treble notes. Maahi Ve from Highway — with A.R. Rahman’s powerful vocals and the rustic travel beat — came through clearly, with noticeable separation between vocals and instruments.

Cameras

The POCO F7 features a 50 MP main camera, an 8MP ultra-wide camera, and a 20MP front-facing selfie camera. The main camera performs well in both daytime and night-time conditions, capturing plenty of detail in well-lit shots and producing relatively low-noise images in low light.

However, the ultra-wide camera falls short in terms of detail, and the selfie camera also struggles to retain finer facial features when taking a shot, resulting in images that lack sharpness and clarity around the face. The device supports video shooting at up to 4K @ 60fps. There was a fair amount of detail in the videos captured with the main camera, and the autofocus was slow but could eventually stay focused on moving subjects.

Performance

The smartphone is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor with Adreno 825 GPU. The unit I reviewed packs in 12 GB RAM and 512 GB storage, with other variants featuring 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage 

On the AnTuTu benchmarking test, it scored 15,16,145 — ranking between the POCO F6 Pro (15,43,863) and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (14,32,591), both powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chips.

In Battlegrounds Mobile India, the device maintained a steady 77 to 89 FPS with no frame drops or stutters. Even after an hour of gameplay, the device stayed cool, and the glass back never felt uncomfortably warm.

It runs Xiaomi’s HyperOS 2, based on Android 15. Performance was smooth throughout, with no lag while multitasking or switching between apps. Heat dissipation was handled well, despite the metal and glass build. Bloatware is still present, and while some can be removed, it takes time and effort to clean up.

Battery

The smartphone features a 7,550 mAh battery, which appears to be the largest currently available in the Indian smartphone market. The phone delivered around 7.5 to 8 hours of screen-on time with mixed usage, including Netflix streaming, Spotify playback, and the occasional voice and video calls.

Bundled with the phone is a 90W charger, which takes the POCO F7 from 0 to 100 per cent in under 50 minutes. Interestingly, the device also supports reverse charging for other smartphones, laptops and accessories. This feature needs to be manually initiated from a pop-up prompt each time the phone is connected to another device, and it is super handy.

Verdict

With competition from the likes of the OnePlus 13R and the Realme GT 7T, the POCO F7 still makes a strong case for itself with its impressive display, solid sound performance and reliable battery life. Apart from the need for a more consistent camera experience across the ultra-wide and selfie cameras, and the slightly tedious manual cleanup of pre-installed apps, there’s little that takes away from what is otherwise a well-rounded smartphone in terms of price and performance.

Published on July 9, 2025