Poco goes it alone as a standalone brand; Pocophone F2 incoming

The Pocophone F1 was a surprising hit, packed with a top-end chipset, decent screen, more than acceptable camera, and excellent battery life.

It also cost next to nothing, with a series of promotions that made it even more of a bargain.

Sadly, availability these days is rather hit and miss, with Amazon going in and out of stock, and many sellers being based abroad and trying to charge more than when it originally came out! (It’s good, but not that good!)

The one thing the F1 lacked was NFC, so no Google Pay support, but for many it didn’t matter and it was considered a more than acceptable compromise.

Even today, it receives fairly regular updates and will soon get Android 10, perhaps as early as next month.

However, it was just one phone – and an ageing one at that.

The F1 was announced back in August 2018, and nothing has come out since. No other phones with the Poco branding, and certainly no F2.

It seemed that Xiaomi had all but given up on the brand, in favour of its own Mi-branded handsets (with slightly higher pricing, although still very competitive).

Poco users were disappointed to have been part of something relatively short lived, and almost gave up hope of ever seeing another phone release.

Today saw some good news, as Poco is becoming an independent brand.

What’s more, Xiaomi has already filed a trademark application for the Poco F2, so we now know there definitely will be a successor to the F1!

There’s even a supposed image of it, supplied by an accessory manufacturer.

What’s more, there might also be other variants this time too, such as an F2 Pro and F2 Lite. Other sources suggest one might be called the X2, or maybe that’s an entirely different phone altogether.

I prefer not to speculate too much, but at least there’s now a degree of certainty that the Pocophone F1 wasn’t just a one-hit wonder.

I hope that the newly independent Poco will still follow the same principles as with the F1, so the phone will come with a flagship SoC, high-quality display (likely 90 or 120Hz), a decent camera configuration, plus a solid battery.

Oh, and a highly competitive price that makes it one of the most affordable phones with a flagship chipset.

Hopefully it won’t be long to wait for some more information, including what the company will do with regards to launching the device in the UK.

Besides Amazon, the only place on the high-street where the F1 was actually sold was Xiaomi’s high-street store at Westfield.

It seems rather unlikely the F2 and variants will ever show up in a Xiaomi store again, unless Poco retains some sort of distribution agreement.

I’ll keep you all posted as time passes and more information comes to light.