In January, Xiaomi unveiled the latest update to the Redmi family of smartphones, this range covers the entry-mid level group of devices, then, at the start of March, Xiaomi's flagship series received its update and I reviewed the Xiaomi 15 variant at the same time.
Today, the brand launches the newest update to the F series which has typically been priced to target mid-range buyers but offering high-end specs. The POCO F7 series consists of the Ultra and Pro variants, and this review is for the global version of the Ultra.
It is important to point out the last bit, because Xiaomi still releases global models with lower specs than the Chinese variants of the same handset, just under a different name, for example:
It's a little frustrating that in 2025 this practice still continues, 700 mAh smaller battery is no small omission, and the 5300 mAh power pack isn't the Silicon Carbon variant either. The naming convention differences between regions may cause some confusion for those of use across the pond, too.
Update - The reason for this battery difference was made clear at the launch event interview/Q&A, the details are provided at the end of the review.
Out of the box
In the past the global variant of a particular model resulted in a slimmer package, for example, no charger included in the box, or if there is then the output wattage is reduced due to the global model of the handset being restricted by the manufacturer. These days, this is less of an issue, and here we see a 120 watt charger in the box, although it is USB-A to C instead if being C to C like everyone else.
This means you will need to use the included white cable which might frustrate those like me who prefer a colour-matched approach tot hings like this.. It also means my other Type-C to C cables capable of up to 240 watts of USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) are not usable with this wall wart, so i'd have to buy more cables that are compliant if I wanted to keep spares in different locations I frequent.
Nevertheless, it is a welcome inclusion, and on top of that the usual high quality dark grey gel TPU case and pre-installed screen protector are included, too.
My only gripe with the screen protectors that Xiaomi install on all of its phones is that when you move the phone around in the light, there is a rainbow effect across the screen which is subtle, but still noticeable, and the image quality is slightly reduced as a result. This is an effect I have seen when using cheap quality screen protectors, so I tend to just peel these off on day 1.
Going back to the case, credit where due, this is superb, very thin and retains the ergonomics of the handset without adding bulk.
The first thing that stands out when taking the phone out of the box is that the camera bump appears quite large, more than other phones, yet put the F7 Ultra side by side with something like the Pixel 9 Pro XL, they both appear similar. It seems that the stepped edging on the F7 Ultra gives the illusion of being a bigger bump.
The same applies comparing against the Xiaomi 15, though on the flip-side the 15's back panel gently curves up to seamlessly meet the camera bump which in turn ends up masking the camera bump extension for the most part:
Staying on the backside for a moment longer, the frosted glass back panel is different both in terms of feel and acoustics compared to the Xiaomi 15.
The 15 has an almost chalky/stone-like finish when I run a fingernail across the surface, the F7 Ultra on the other hand has a more standard feeling finish, it's still good quality but it sounds hollow under a nail and visually has an almost speckle-frosted aesthetic when viewed under a strong light source:
I find the branding text on the back a bit distracting as well, take a look at the photo below under normal room lighting, it draws the eye to the lines of text below the POCO branding and just looks ugly to me, the extra text should have been darker in shade:
Other phones hide these extra bits of text on the mid-frame, or print discreetly on the back and only visible under certain conditions. The Xiaomi 15 series does have similar text on the back as well, but it's placed out of the way so as not to catch the eyes. and isn't as blindingly obvious.
These quirks tend to be the hallmarks of a mid-range priced handset where visual aesthetics generally end up being an afterthought. Thankfully, it's on the inside where the F7 Ultra is top-end, so let's take a closer look at what's under the hood.
Features
Chinese phone makers still put infrared transmitters on phones, it seems these are very popular in some regions, even though many products these days are starting to use Bluetooth LE for pairing a remote control.
I gave the IR blaster a try with the pre-installed Mi Remote app and found it worked well with a large database of appliances and devices in the database from brands around the world, though unlike those One-4-All universal remotes from the 1990s, you cannot use the IR blaster to learn the functions from an already existing remote, if your model of device is not in the database, no IR blasting for you I'm afraid.
If you are curious as to where the IR emitter is, since none of the photos show the usual porthole for one, it's on the back with the camera array, only visible through a digital camera:
There are no additional unique features that don't also exist on other phones that might be worth mentioning, though the 50W wireless charging is cool, and I will cover that in the battery portion of the review shortly.
The hardware
Snapdragon 8 Elite is powering the F7 Ultra, and with that comes the expectation of superb performance, minimal stuttering and an overall polished experience when using high bandwidth parts of the phone such as 5G/Wi-Fi, or making use of the rather snappy UFS 4.1 storage system. Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 7 come as part of this whole package, although supporting products using these are few and far between today, it bodes well for future-proofing if you intend on keeping the F7 Ultra for several years at least.
This much seemed to be all fine in my testing, with 5G speeds on the EE network rivalling speeds seen on the Xiaomi 15, Pixel 9 Pro XL and Galaxy S24 Ultra, easily exceeding 650Mbps here in the UK's south coast.
We have reached a level where things like this, even for a mid-range handset, are really of no worry any more. Additionally, things like battery life and measuring runtimes are less necessary as even handsets running on lower model SoCs easily last an entire day, and where a quick top-up is needed, unless it's an iPhone, Pixel or a Galaxy, then HyperCharge is avaialble whenever needed, whether up to 120W wired (PD 3.0), or 50W wireless using the Qi standard.
Xiaomi put a lot of focus on the gaming capabilities on the F7 Ultra, too, and made it a priority to point out some of the new features inside that are capable of delivering improved gaming visuals and framerates such as Super Resolution thanks to the VisionBoost D7 chipset. It claims that a 120 FPS smart framerate is possible in games like Genshin Impact, and with that comes HDR as well, and when compared to other Snapdragon 8 Elite powered phones, such as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the POCO F7 Ultra does a better job at rendering more detail:
I am not a mobile gamer, so my knowledge here is limited, but this technology has existed in PC gaming for a fairly long time, and which I am more than familiar with. It's nice to see dedicated hardware improving the mobile gaming experience in this way, and Xiaomi says this works on all games, although in Genshin Impact the differences are more obvious than in others, just like in PC games where the benefits of DLSS/FSR/XeSS upscaling can vary from game to game.
The software
There isn't much new to share on the HyperOS 2 front, much of what I talked about in the Xiaomi 15 review applies here, though there are a few alterations that warrant a mention.
Things like Dual-core visuals, a new feature not seen on the Xiaomi 15 series, I suspect this is because it is a feature developed to make use of the VisionBoost D7 chipset hardware similar to what is available on PC graphics cards these days with tech like Nvidia RTX Video (HDR). I tried to see any visual differences in some reference videos with this turned on, but could not spot much change, perhaps because the videos being played or streamed were already of sufficient motion quality and resolution to begin with.
This may be more like RTX Video, where resolutions far below 1080p see the greatest benefit from the AI upscaling enhancements. It is also not clear in what apps this works best on, or if it's a global feature in anything that plays video.
Other than that, the general software experience is good to excellent. I have said this before, but we have reached a point where the hardware on modern phones has reached a peak, even in the mid-range landscape, and everything boils down to how well optimised the software is to make efficient use of the hardware - An area which in years gone by was a major issue with slow app loading, scrolling stutter and so on.
Things are not perfect, however...
... There remains a bug whereby some apps such as YouTube drop to 60Hz which results in a lowered experience, especially when scrolling. This is with the refresh rate in the display settings set to the default, which dynamically adjusts the refresh rate based on what is being viewed from the base 60Hz up to 120Hz.
Setting the refresh rate to custom and choosing 120Hz results in YouTube still dropping to 60Hz, even though I confirmed the toggle (image below) flips to ON when the 120 Hz refresh rate is selected inside the YouTube app:
This quirk is the same on the Xiaomi 15, and no doubt all the other HyperOS 2 phones and does not seem to be something people have been talking about much which I find strange, as it's immediately obvious that something is a miss the moment scrolling goes from 120Hz to a locked 60Hz.
The AMOLED panel on the F7 Ultra is not LTPO (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) like the ones found on the Xiaomi 15 series and latest Pixels and Galaxy models, at least it's not advertised in any documentation POCO's team has sent over. This is evident by the fact that the lowest refresh rate observed is 60Hz whether in auto mode or custom modes. On a modern LTPO display, regardless of what the user chooses, the display will always drop to 1Hz if a static image is showing, you can test this by unlocking Android Developer Options, and toggling on the option to Show Refresh Rate.
This means the larger display consumes more battery than the flagship competition at any brightness level or display setting. I would have expected a Snapdragon 8 Elite powered phone to be using an equally paired LTPO panel instead of this Flow AMOLED, as Xiaomi calls it, which only offers a fixed 60/120Hz.
Another area I noticed some difference in the software is that HyperOS 2 on the Xiaomi 15 uses different icons which include animations on transition back to the homescreen, something which the POCO F7 Ultra does not have, even though they both use the same core hardware, have the same RAM and the same HyperOS version, take a look:
Whether this is a conscious choice to up-sell the flagship Xiaomi brand to consumers or not is unclear, given that both handsets use HyperOS 2 should mean they both have the same experience just like how Samsung offers its OneUI interface, or Google with the Pixel series. Maybe this is a simple case of feet-finding, much like how Samsung spent years perfecting OneUI after it binned off the absolutely awful Touchwiz interface, though at least HyperOS 2 is mostly a polished experience aside from these cosmetic differences between handsets.
On one hand I do prefer the round icons on the F7 Ultra here, but the Xiaomi 15's squircle icons have animations which look nicer to the eyes, even if they might copy iOS for the most part in shape and execution.
Camera(s)
My bread and butter, at the time of publication this section will show comparisons against both the Pixel 9 Pro XL and the Xiaomi 15. Once I am back from the Singapore launch event, I will add the photos shot using the F7 Ultra into a gallery update here.
For now, these comparisons showcase a fair view of how the processing between the Xiaomi 15 with its LEICA optics differs to the POCO F7 Ultra optics, even though the camera software features the same settings, just minus the LEICA image filters.
My findings reflect the same observations that I made with the Xiaomi 15, in that the image processing via the stock camera app is nearly the same between both the 15 and the F7 Ultra, which was a suprise because part of the 15's appeal was that it has LEICA hardware assisting the software.
Even though the 15 has the higher grade optics and filters, this does not help improve picture quality as Xiaomi's image processing and metering in software appears biased towards producing brightened images at the expense of loss of dynamic range, typically seen in highlight areas compared to the more natural vibe of say Google's HDR+ processing giving better dynamic range resulting in better highlight control on Pixel handsets. Even Samsung's OneUI camera app produces better results than what I am seeing from the Xiaomi camera app.
In some scenes (above) all three phone cameras capture similar results in their default photo mode letting the software decide how to correctly capture the scene, but other scenes do show noticeable differences as the Xiaomi camera software almost always picks settings that favour brightness as mentioned, for example, in the below photos, both F7 Ultra and Xiaomi 15 opted for a higher ISO when metering for the scene, even though the shutter speed was near enough the same between all three phones:
In this example the Pixel produced the most authentic image, this is a low-light scene with the uplighter in the background set to medium brightness, and to the left the monitor indirectly illuminates the lower scene and side of the speaker cabinet.
Even though the ISO on the Pixel image is considerably lower, the capture is still detailed and exposed correctly thanks to Google's HDR+ system, something which does not seem to exist on any HyperOS phone currently available. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra might be an exception due to its large 1" sensor and higher grade optics, but from the samples I have seen online, there are still telltale signs of the usual stock camera app causing the same issues in complex scenes.
All of what I have said above is based on simple usage, which is exactly the type of usage the vast majority of people will be doing on a daily basis, opening the camera app, pointing at the subject, and taking the photo.
Most people don't care or want to spend time adjusting settings, tapping to lock focus and metering, then re-composing after AF (auto focus)/AE (auto exposure) lock to take the picture. We already know the hardware is up to standard, it's just being let down by the software processing that happens the moment you click the shutter button.
So does this mean that the F7 Ultra produces flagship grade photos since it is similar to the Xiaomi 15 in spec? In a way, yes, but also no, they are both very good and produce contrasty, appealing images, but they also both lose some highlight detail due to the exposure bias the software is doing in order to record a brighter image.
Samsung went through this exposure bias phase years ago before reaching near-Pixel levels of HDR processing nowadays, with Apple not a million miles away, so it is something we have seen before, and clearly is a forward direction POCO is moving in which is great.
After the Xiaomi 15 review was published, I presented my feedback to Xiaomi to help test and provide valuable feedback to improve the camera app and its processing. It's clear to me what needs to be done to get it to similar levels as those other phones.
Having said all that, in isolation, away from a direct comparison against a Pixel or other competitor, the F7 Ultra images and videos are generally very good with a lot of detail edge-to-edge, as well as low light noise control. Contrast is good, tonal range is good when the general lighting is decent as opposed to the complex examples shown above in the side by side comparisons.
Gallery: POCO F7 Ultra Camera
i specifically chose scenes to capture that contained a good tonal range of colour and detail within the context of the scene, Singapore often has a bit of haze, too given the heat and humidity which can throw up some gremlins in photos, but no issues here. This is a typical example of what most of us would photograph on our routine travels, they don't have that creamy Pixel look about them, but they aren't bad either.
Battery
Here's where things are really interesting. I already mentioned the regional differences with the battery, what is interesting is that the 120W charging is available right out of the box thanks to a charger being included, the global variants of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra does not come with a charger in the box, so it's interesting that a fully specced 120W PD 3.0 charger is bundled in with a POCO F series.
The 5300 mAh battery charges to full from 9% in under 50-minutes I found, but I was expecting this to be even lower given that some phones can charge similar battery sizes to full from empty in under 30-minutes.
To further test the charging speed, I let the battery drop to below 10%, then plugged the F7 Ultra into a 150W power bank that displays the charging output wattage. I only had a 100W cable at the time but this is not an issue for the specific test I set out to conduct.
I found that whilst the phone pulls around 91W from ~10% charge remaining (with the phone displaying "100W Max"), this wattage starts to drop dramatically after 30% where the rate averages 30W-65W from the charger. At no point did I see above 91W being shown which indicates to me that certain temperatures and conditions must be met in order to pull 100W or more for a longer period of time before it throttles down.
The 120W charging, then, may be a bit of a red herring here, whilst it may charge at 120W in specific conditions, the bulk of the charge cycle is done at half of that, and this explains why the full charge time wasn't closer to 30-minutes. To be fair, this is fairly typical for many phones, and all phones will tail off charging rates to even lower numbers once 70-80% is reached in order to protect the battery cells from accelerated wear as the cells get closer to full capacity.
The F7 Ultra also supports 50W of wireless charging which actually makes a difference compared to other Qi solutions on the market only supporting up to 15W, whilst a fraction support up to 30W.
I timed a full charge cycle at under 1 hour with the official Xiaomi 50W Pro charger stand, that's faster charging wirelessly than wired charging on the current flagship phones from Apple, Samsung and Google. The phone did not get any warmer than it does when charging with a cable thanks to the stand's active cooling system.
It's a shame the global variant does not have the silicon carbon battery, so 700 mAh of capacity is shaved off for our region as a result of this.
Conclusion
With the F7 Ultra coming in at a starting price of £650, as a phone with flagship specs, it beats the Pixel 9 which is priced the same currently on Google's store, it also beats the Galaxy S25 512GB which Samsung wants £959 for at the time of writing. The F7 Ultra is a better phone between these devices given its price and genuine flagship performance.
I am sure that most people looking for a phone with the power and speed of a true flagship will not be too concerned about some highlight detail bneing lost in scenes when taking photos, but for those who spend a lot of time taking photos and videos, this will definitely be an issue and I do hope Xiaomi is listening to this feedback, as it will only enhance the potential customer base in the long run and finally we would see a true contender for ultimate flagship phone, without the crazy prices the big three brands out there are wanting these days.
If the F7 Ultra gets an update that makes the Image SIgnal Processor (ISP) process captured photos and videos like a Pixel does, then my next purchase would almost certainly be something running HyperOS if this sort of pricing remains consistent.
I get the feeling we are getting close to that being realised, just a few more steps to go... Maybe.
The AMOLED display is bright and clear, especially once the screen protector is removed, the speakers do a fine job, although not up to the bass extension of a Galaxy S series, the software performance is close to excellent, the 60Hz bug with some apps is annoying, though, but nothing Xiaomi could not fix with a software update.
The visual aesthetic on the F7 Ultra is appealing I would say, it looks and feels good, the accented ring around the camera lenses is a nice touch which adds subtle flavour to an otherwise plain backside.
No eSIM support raises an eyebrow since the chipset supports it, and it's the same hardware as on the Xiaomi 15 which does have eSIM support, so this omission is a deliberate choice by Xiaomi. I am not sure why this was done, since eSIM use is on the rise, especially for those travelling.
The POCO F7 Ultra is a very good phone that could easily be excellent and a clear cut above the competition, even at twice price giving Samsung, Apple and Google a serious run if POCO continues to improve on what it has already done whilst not increasing the price massively. There are things that could do with a software update, such as camera processing for dynamic range, and HDR toggle control that is actually useful, and not to be confused with the Ultra HDR toggle in camera settings which is not the same as HDR image processing which we typically know as HDR+ on other smartphones.
Update - 2025.03.29
I have now returned to the UK from the POCO global launch event and spending days before and after with the team. I was able to ask plenty of questions and get transparent answers that I felt were perfectly reasonable. It's nice to see a company being this genuine about their approach to products.
Here are some that I would like to share with our readers:
1: Android Security updates - This was my direct question to Angus Kai Ho Ng (head of product marketing & host of the launch event) during our Q&A session immediately following launch). Angus stated that it takes time to test and release a security update since different regions have different hardware.
2: Battery specs being lower for the global version - This has a two-fold reason, the first being that logistically it is harder to get a 6000mAh battery into the global market due to capacity limits imposed by regulations, it just takes time to get approved it seems, it is also more expensive to put such a large capacity Silicon Carbon battery in the global version, the price would end up being higher for the handset. I know some would argue that this would be fine up to a limit, and I kind of agree given even £700 for the F7 Ultra would be very compelling, especially given the rest of the specs.
3: Target audience for the POCO F series - Angus made clear that his vision for the F series is to target the type of audience that knows what they want and are generally well-informed. He stated that POCOI won't be beating the likes of Samsung, and whilst there were jokes on stage aimed at both Apple and Samsung, the aim of the POCO F series is to provide flagship performance, but undercut the flagship competition on price. It seems a lot of focus has been put on price, and rightly so, but I remain uncertain if some of that focus should have also gone onto refining the camera experience as this could be done relatively quickly with some software updates to the camera app or the firmware for the ISP just to add the little bit of extra polish
During the week in Singapore, I compare findings with Chris Minasians (Totallydubbed), we came to similar conclusions on many aspects, and I highlighted my specific camera findings, things like not being able to switch lenses during video recording at 4K 60fps, and that dynamic range capture in video is still not up to scratch, even though the contrast between back and grey is mostly excellent, supporting features like EIS which combines with the OIS results in specular highlight jitter during video recording, a quirk that has impacted phone camera videos (regardless of manufacturer) for several years, and has only been improving with each new model at a snail's pace.
Lastly. a gallery of photographs from the Singapore trip taken by the F7 Ultra has been added to the end of the camera section to highlight how good the camera is fort both photo and video when used in isolation and not being compared to other phones, the results are mostly excellent it has to be said.
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